Oskar Schindler saved 1200 lives and here is one way that someone could save that many lives now

Tweet As the Red Army drew nearer to Auschwitz concentration camp and the other easternmost concentration camps, the SS began evacuating the remaining prisoners westward. Amon Göth's personal secretary, Mietek Pemper, alerted Schindler to the Nazis' plans to close all factories not directly involved with the war effort, including Schindler's enamelware facility. Pemper also persuaded and encouraged Schindler to switch production from enamelware to anti-tank grenades in an effort to save Schindler's Jewish workers. Tipped off to the factory closure, Schindler persuaded the SS officials to allow him to move his 1,200 Jewish workers to Brünnlitz, in the German-speaking Sudetenland, thus sparing them from certain death in the gas chambers.

The academy award winning movie "Schindler's list" shows this story and one of the scenes is below. The scene is "whoever saves one life, saves the world entire". It is also where Liam Neeson as Schindler laments that he should have done more.

Today there are 60 million births where the mother has an untrained attendent or no help at all. About 1 in 60 of those births ends up having an infection in the baby that results in death.

$11 per month to globalgiving.org - Provides 3 emergency clean birthing kits, including a bar of soap, clear plastic sheet, razor blade, an umbilical cord tie, cloth and latex gloves to help deliver safe babies in crisis situations.

A properly used birthing kit reduces the risk of infection by 13 times.

To save 1200 lives, then it is 60 birthing kits per life saved times 13/12 to get the reduced infection rate. Therefore about 78,000 birthing kits. $11 for 3 kits.

Raising or donating $286,000 for the UN Family Planning Agency would enable 1200 lives to be saved. Direct donation on a large scale the UN Family Planning Agency could be more efficient as 200 kits costs $250, plus there is $100 of extra items for a larger program (flashlights and other items) and there is the cost of distribution.

There are also 1600 women per day (584,000 per year) that die from childbirth complications and many of those are infection related.

2 page document that describes the kits and problem of unsafe births.




For the objection about over population. People in the developing world who lose a baby will try to have more children after the failed birth. Having high risks of children dieing from disease encourages larger family and the strategy of having 5-6 children to ensure 2-3 children will live. So saving the lives of babies and children just prevents needless death and suffering and does not increase overall population.

Of the 60 million unattended births, about 4 million end with the fatal complications. Other problems besides infection are severe bleeding. This is the reason that the $33/month level to support one trained midwife is a good way to support a birthing clinic for 50 safe births per month.

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