Christy Turlington Burns, one of the renowned 'supers' from the nineties is using her own experience of childbirth to help the lives of others. During the birth of her first child six years ago she began to hemorrhage, but was lucky enough to have the staff and equipment to support her so well that she never really considered it a big deal. That was until she learned that hemorrhage is the leading cause of maternally related deaths - and from then on the 41 year old supermodel decided to use her resources to help reduce the hundreds of thousands of women that die from the condition.

Turlington Burns set to work, becoming an advocate for maternal health within humanitarian group CARE, and furthermore decided to fund her own documentary in the hope of saving lives. "I had a sort of experience that was a little bit of survivor's guilt," she told Reuters, "I was fortunate, but think of all the women around the world who aren't". Together with actor-turned-film director husband Ed Burns, she began making the documentary entitled "No Woman, No Cry", visiting Tanzania, Bangladesh, Guatemala and parts of the United States.

"Hundreds of thousands of women are dying each year," she explained, "and 90 percent of those deaths are preventable." Having spent the past two years making the hour long documentary, Turlington burns hopes it will allow viewers to "put their feet in the shoes of somebody else whom they might not think they have anything in common with... Certainly birth and pregnancy are one of those things in life that can connect people."

To raise awareness and funds for the cause, Turlington Burns is launching www.everymothercounts.org to coincide with the release of the film, which will make its debut at New York's Tribeca Film Festival this Saturday.