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Maternal Mortality

© Moira Richards

Perhaps someone close to you has given birth to a baby recently? Chances are that it was a joyous and celebratory occasion, especially if the new mother lives in one of the few wealthy, developed countries of the world. Not so, if she lives in an impoverished developing country. There she has a wickedly high chance of dying before her baby is much more than a day or two old.

A 1996 United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) report estimated that almost 600 000 women die every year - from childbirth-related health hazards. And the ways in which these mothers die, are not at all pretty.

About one third of them give birth and then bleed and bleed uncontrolledly until they bleed to death.

Some women have a pelvis too small for their baby to pass through. The mother suffers labour contractions for days until first her baby, and then she, dies. No chance of an emergency caesarian section for a woman who lives in a country that has no ambulances, nor roads to run them on, nor hospitals to run them to.

If a mother does manage to deliver her baby safely, she may still die in agony a few days later from undiagnosed or untreated septicemia caused by the birth process. Perhaps she will die equally painfully from a condition of late pregnancy called eclampsia, a few weeks before her baby is even ready to be born. She may not die from any of these perils, but she has an even greater chance of being permanently disabled by one of them. A woman may survive all these, and the many other hazards of childbirth in a developing country.

She may be lucky enough to give birth to a healthy baby and to live to rear her child too. Then she will have to run the whole gamut of risks again, when she becomes pregnant with her next baby, and the next.  Women's child-bearing years run from their teens to their thirties.

Millions of young women die every decade because the governments of their countries do not spend money to make childbirth a safe event.  Maternal mortality is not prioritised as an important issue. Where resources are limited, there is no money to ensure that women can get health education, adequate nutrition, trained medical assistance, affordable drugs and hygenic clinics.