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Two months into my first pregnancy, I suffered a miscarriage and needed to seek medical care.

Although a miscarriage is difficult for any woman to experience, I had access to the best care. My physician was excellent, I trusted her judgment, and the imaging equipment, laboratory facilities and clinical care were all first-rate.

That's not surprising — except that I was then living in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, the capital city of one of India's poorest states.

In 2012, as a freshly-minted pediatrician, I left my home in D.C. to manage a newborn health project aimed at strengthening essential newborn care practices like breastfeeding and infection detection in rural Uttar Pradesh.

In Lucknow, a city of more than 2 million, the gap between rich and poor was a fact of life. For a foreigner like me, who grew up in the United States, it was my first real-life immersion into A Tale of Two Cities.

I could see the disparity on a regular basis. My husband and I lived in a beautiful flat with marble floors, air-conditioning, a lush garden. The lovely woman who cleaned our house, Asha, proudly had us over for chai, showing us her 7 by 7 foot space, a single mat on the floor, no plumbing, shared with her daughter and two young grandchildren — and she was relatively better off than most of the poor in Uttar Pradesh.

The state-of-the-art medical care I received was most certainly not the norm in Lucknow. Thousands of women deliver their babies at home, and care in public hospitals does not always offer significant advantage.

One day, I walked with one of my interns to a public hospital where we were working on a research study. The hospital, which served some of the city's poorest, was just a few miles from where I had received care myself. As we made our way to the pediatrics ward to collect data, we caught a glimpse of a fly-covered corpse of an elderly, frail man, lying to the side of the hospital entrance. Just inside the door were dozens of patients, filling every last space, waiting in the stifling heat to be seen. Some were acutely ill, gasping for breath, or in excruciating pain. Nurses circulated, trying to care for the sickest, but they struggled to keep up. It was a difficult sight; I did my best to stay collected while comforting my young intern, keeping her propped up and hydrated as she grew dizzy and faint.

After a year in India, I moved back to Washington, D.C., where I now work as a newborn technical adviser at Save the Children for the Saving Newborn Lives program. Our goal is to help professionals and ministries of health in Africa and Asia reduce newborn death rates.

Every year, Save the Children releases its State of the World's Mothers Report, highlighting the best and worst places in the world to be a mother. This year, we took a closer look at the disparity between rich and poor children in cities. I thought of my time in India.

That's where the report found the largest gaps between rich and poor. The poorest children in cities across India are three times as likely as the wealthiest children to die before their fifth birthday. In India nearly 300,000 babies die the day they are born — more than any other country in the world, accounting for nearly a third of all newborn deaths worldwide.

And we found that 50,000 mothers die each year in India as a result of birth complications, versus 1,200 in the United States. But the poor bear the greatest burden not only in the developing world but in the U.S. as well. In my hometown of Washington, D.C., the infant death rate in 2012 in the city's poorest section was 14.9 per 1000 live births, more than ten times higher than in the city's wealthiest section.

My personal experiences in India breathe a sense of humanity into the numbers. I don't want to see any mother or child receive inadequate care by virtue of the country they live in, their postal code or the amount of money they can claim to their name.

I am expecting a baby in the coming month. I have some of the worries and anxieties any woman faces with the arrival of a new baby, but losing my own life or the life of my baby is not a fear that occupies my mind. I hope that in the years to come, in India, Washington, D.C., and around the world, all mothers-to-be can feel that same sense of peace.

At a rural newborn care training during my days in Uttar Pradesh, I watched from the corner of my eye as an infant crawled away from his mother and tried to put a rock in his mouth. Both his mom and I lunged toward him, pulling the rock away, gesturing no, then turned to each other and laughed. Kids will be kids, no matter where they live in the world.

Bina Valsangkar is a pediatrician who works with Save the Children's Saving Newborn Lives program.

newborns

maternal health

India

In 2010, we started eating sandwiches. Five years later, we are officially full. From now on, Sandwich Monday is going to be an occasional feature here on The Salt, rather than a regular one.

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The nine-patty T-Rex Burger helped Peter realize in 2013 that he'd been eating underpattied burgers his whole life. NPR hide caption

itoggle caption NPR

The nine-patty T-Rex Burger helped Peter realize in 2013 that he'd been eating underpattied burgers his whole life.

NPR

There are many reasons why, but mostly it's because Miles knows a guy who knows a guy who says he can replace all of our blood with gorilla plasma and this will undo everything we've done to our bodies since the series began, but he only works on Mondays.

We'll still surface to talk about new, disgusting sandwiches (and new, disgusting other things that we will never admit are not sandwiches) when they come along. And when we all inevitably die, sometime in the next 15 minutes, these are the images that will flash before our eyes:

The Unhealthiest Things We Ate: The Kevin Butler, The Ignatius R, The Arby's Meat Mountain

The Worst Thing We Ever Ate: The Land, Sea, and Air Burger

The Most Yogurty: Yogurt For Men

The Second Most Yogurty: Soylent

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Even Robert's patented Double Eagle Sandwich Grip of the Abe Lincoln in 2014 couldn't contain the mashed potatoes. NPR hide caption

itoggle caption NPR

Even Robert's patented Double Eagle Sandwich Grip of the Abe Lincoln in 2014 couldn't contain the mashed potatoes.

NPR

The One We're Most Likely To Have Nightmares About: The Egg Rollie

The Most Surprisingly Delicious: The St. Paul Sandwich, The Jim Shoe

Thank you all for participating in the comments. That's what made this fun. That, and watching Robert nearly choke every Monday. We'll miss that most of all.

Sandwich Monday is a satirical feature from the humorists at Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me!

sandwich monday

We've been telling you about the opposition from some writers to the decision by the PEN American Center to give Charlie Hebdo its Freedom of Expression Courage Award. The satirical French publication was targeted by Islamist militants Jan. 7 apparently for its cartoons of Islam's Prophet Muhammad. The attack killed 12 people.

"There is a critical difference between staunchly supporting expression that violates the acceptable — and enthusiastically rewarding such expression," more than 180 writers said in their letter of protest.

In particular, they criticized Charlie Hebdo's cartoons of Muhammad, saying the drawings were intended to "cause further humiliation and suffering" to a victimized population. But Jean-Baptiste Thoret, a film critic for the magazine, who is accepting the PEN award in New York on Tuesday, told NPR that stand is seemingly contradictory.

"I have to say that if you're standing for the freedom of expression, you can't be at one moment for this freedom of expression, and, two or three minutes later, against that," he told NPR's Melissa Block. "You know, you're honoring a principle. You're not honoring a specific content in a magazine. Even in Charlie Hebdo," we did not often agree.

Thoret told Melissa that much of the criticism directed at the magazine appears to come from those who "don't really know what they are talking about." He says the magazine never attacked Muslims. What it did do, he said, was sometimes satirize religion.

"Nothing is sacred for us," he said. "That's something that is very important."

It's also important to note here that Charlie Hebdo had a long tradition of lampooning figures from business, politics and religion. But it was its cartoons of Muhammad that it first printed in 2005 that got the most attention. Many Muslims consider any depiction of their prophet – even positive ones – to be blasphemous. Charlie Hebdo was firebombed in 2011 and received death threats over the years that culminated in the Jan. 7 attack that resulted in the deaths of some of its best-known cartoonists and staff members.

The attacks led to a global outpouring of support for the magazine – and defenders adopting the slogan "Je suis Charlie" [I am Charlie]. Thoret told Melissa that the slogan's popularity is ironic.

"Before Jan. 7, very few people were Je Suis Charlie at that time; so the irony is that today everybody is Je Suis Charlie, of course," he said. "We are all OK with that. We are all against terrorism. But maybe it would have been more useful 10 years ago. At that moment, we [were] very alone. So for me it's part of that irony. Everybody is Je suis Charlie, but ... maybe it's too late."

PEN American Center

Charlie Hebdo

France

Looking for new growth and promising better restaurant experiences for customers, McDonald's President and CEO Steve Easterbrook is changing how the chain manages global markets and plans to boost the number of franchised restaurants.

"The reality is, our recent performance has been poor," Easterbrook said in a video released Monday. "The numbers don't lie. Which is why, as we celebrate 60 years of McDonald's, I will not shy away from resetting this business."

McDonald's will change the way it organizes global markets, putting leaders in charge of four main groups. The new structure relies less on geography and more on market maturity and growth prospects:

The United States: more than 40 percent of operating income in 2014.

International Lead Markets: Australia, Canada, France, Germany and the U.K., where established markets represent another 40 percent of operating income.

High-Growth Markets: China, Italy, Poland,Russia, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland and the Netherlands (10 percent of operating income).

Foundational Markets: Around 100 markets, which will mostly be franchised (independently owned).

Calling it "a global turnaround," Easterbrook, who was named CEO in January — after a year in which global sales and revenue decreased — said McDonald's will become a "modern progressive burger company."

Its slump has also led McDonald's to tinker with its menu – including the addition, last month, of a $5 burger. NPR's Marilyn Geewax reported for The Salt:

"McDonald's has been struggling in recent years to keep pace with fast-casual chains like Five Guys and Chipotle Mexican Grill.

"So the fast-food giant is testing different menu options to lure back customers. Starting later this month, McDonald's diners will be able to choose a $4.99 sandwich — the Sirloin Third Pound burger."

Other changes Marilyn covered included a new range of toppings, all-day breakfast, and new pastries, such as a bundt cake.

Aside from the promises of better food with better service, Easterbook's video address was also notable for his ability to keep his eyes open for long periods of time without blinking. By our count, in one stretch, he went nearly a minute without closing his eyes.

McDonald's