Could More Die Each Year From Complicated Pregnancies Than War?

by Daniel J Gerstle · 2009-12-15 11:55:00 UTC
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A recently publicized Spanish public health study explores the ecological factors revolving around why women die in childbirth. They cite an estimate of about 500,000 deaths per year globally, about half in Sub-Saharan Africa.

In the Chechen and Bosnian Wars, well over 200,000 people were killed and millions displaced. It took armies and militias using some of the most powerful weapons available, pounding city blocks and villages for years to kill that number of people.

With maternal mortality, each story is an individual tale of a couple, six to nine months of planning, and then a sudden emergency like gestational hyper-tension or hemorrhaging. It's the the most tragic issue humans face. The developed world hardly worries about the issue anymore. But it happens everyday and here's why...

The US, EU, and other leading donors already commit a huge effort and a great deal of funding in foreign aid to address reproductive health emergencies like maternal mortality, including support to national ministries of health, rural health programs, projects aimed at reducing domestic violence and traditional birth attendants, but it is still not enough.

Often politics prevent greater action. For more details, see the WHO page on sexual and reproductive health. To understand why the tragedy unfolds more often in Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as places like Afghanistan, consider not only that the rural health centers may not be fully stocked with supplies or properly trained staff. The issue also has a lot to do with whether women have access to education about hygiene, whether women have access to health care providers who prioritize obstetric and gynecological health, and--this is key--whether pregnant women have access to proper nutrition.

Perhaps it's a no-brainer that Change.org sets this as the #1 priority recommendation for foreign aid reform legislation and the US Agency for International Development in the next months? Public health specialists in Sub-Saharan Africa please weigh in, if you have time.

[Photo: Maternity ward in Sierra Leone, Amnesty International]

Daniel J Gerstle is a journalist, human rights researcher, and humanitarian aid consultant. He is Editor and Chief Correspondent for HELO: The Crisis Story Magazine.
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