See below for a video of the entire Every Woman Every Child conference, a United Nations webcast. Following an address by the U.N. Secretary General and several prime ministers, Edna was featured in the third panel Game Changers. You may skip ahead to 1:34 to hear from Edna.

The Every Woman Every Child Plenary event took place on Tuesday September 20, 2011, at the United Nations in New York City. The Plenary was hosted by the Secretary-General and dedicated to showcase contributions from Heads of State and Government and leaders from different stakeholder groups whose achievements in support of the Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health have been significant throughout the year.

Christanne Amampour opened the Game Changers session by asking Edna to bring to the assembled her “unique perspective,” having worked on the ground to save women and children. Edna said that after retiring from a career at the World Health Organization, “I tried to put to practice what I had been preaching all of my life, so I went home and built a hospital.”

Edna continued, “Women are dying of causes that are so preventable, which a trained health worker could so easily have protected them from.” Midwives are trained for 18 months. Low-technology basic training, has prevented 3/4 of the deaths of women who otherwise would have died. Training of midwives is the cause Edna has concentrated most on. “If it can be done in the horn of Africa, if an old woman like me can do it then the world can do it even better. If we join hands and concentrate on training health workers in the 20 least-served countries I think we can go a long ways. We are ready to share our experience with others…. It doesn’t take rocket science to prevent a woman from dying of these type of causes.”

Numerous commitments and updates were announced at the event, including a $500 million initiative by Merck to reduce child mortality and a report by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on the commitment to double the percentage of births attended by a skilled health worker by 2015 in Bangladesh. WHO Director General Dr. Margaret Chan also announced the formation of the independent Expert Review Group, which will report on the results and resources related to the Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health and on progress in implementing the recommendations of the Commission on Information and Accountability for Women’s and Children’s Health.