The MacArthur Foundation first began making grants in Mexico in 1986 and opened an office in Mexico City in 1992. The Foundation's current areas of emphasis in the country are population and reproductive health and human rights. Its human rights grantmaking focuses on efforts at the national level to build up leading human rights organizations, strengthen the system of public human rights commissions, and promote work in the area of police reform. There is also a special emphasis on human rights work in the states of Guerrero and Jalisco to help implement model reforms and programs and redress local human rights problems. The Foundation's population and reproductive health grantmaking in Mexico focuses on helping to reduce the highest maternal mortality ratios in the country, concentrating on the rural and indigenous women in three states, Chiapas, Guerrero, and Oaxaca, and to reduce abortion-related maternal death.
President Felipe Calderon of Mexico recently announced a new strategy to reduce maternal mortality based largely on a proposal written by the National Safe Motherhood Committee, a longtime MacArthur grantee. Under the strategy, Mexico’s three main public health providers will provide emergency obstetric care to all pregnant women free of charge. Previously, women could be rejected by one provider and referred to another, causing delays in receiving maternal health care. The Safe Motherhood Committee will monitor implementation of the measure to ensure compliance among the providers, the Mexican Social Security Institute, the Ministry of Health, and the State Workers Social Security Institute. The strategy will be launched in nine states, including the Foundation’s priority states of Chiapas, Guerrero, and Oaxaca. Calderon made the announcement in conjunction with International Women’s Health Day on May 28.
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