In Congo, Highest fertility rate and highest maternal death rate

Ashley Judd spends three weeks in Rwanda and Congo.  She compared the countries as being at opposite ends of the spectrum. 

After returning from trip (the Congo portion), she went to bed for two weeks to readjust. 

Her interview with the TODAY’s Hoda Kotb and Kathie Lee Gifford was very good.  She quotes a Biblical principle when asked what she will say to the UN.

 

Ashley Judd: Women's rights can end poverty - Celebrities- msnbc.com.

The cycle of Third World poverty cannot be broken until women have the freedom to regulate their own fertility, said actress and activist Ashley Judd, who recently returned from a three-week humanitarian mission to Rwanda and the Congo.

Judd’s time in the poverty-racked Democratic Republic of Congo — democratic, she said, in name only — was particularly wrenching. The country has the highest fertility rate in the world, she said, with 6.3 live births per woman, and also the highest maternal death rate in the world.

“Those deaths are agonizing,” Judd said. “They are from malaria. They are from diarrheal disease — all preventable and treatable, every single one of them. And it is so devastating.”