Kini Nsom
8 November 2007
World leaders have called for a halt to the needless deaths of 10 million women and girls who die each generation during pregnancy and childbirth, and four million newborn babies who die every year.
This was the main resolve of the leaders that included 100 cabinet ministers and UN officials when they met at an anti-maternal mortality conference dubbed "Women Deliver" that held in London recently.
The meeting that brought together delegates from 75 countries and 1,500 decision-makers was crucial given that it charted more strategies of strengthening the health system and creating the political will to save the lives and improve the health of women, mothers and newborn babies around the world.
The main point of focus was the developing countries where little efforts are being made by the leaders to reverse the tragedy of child and maternal mortality.The call was made to world leaders to seek to reverse the nightmare in order not to make complete nonsense of UN Millennium Development Goals numbers four and five that call for a huge reduction of child mortality and the improvement of maternal health.
That is why workshops during the two-day meeting that held from October 18 to 20, demonstrated the need for governments, especially those of developing countries, to invest in key areas that would make pregnancy safer, reduce maternal deaths and enable women to reach their fullest potentials.
Addressing participants at the conference, the Executive Director of the United Nations population Fund, UNFPA, Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, said one woman out of 20 in Africa risks dying of maternal causes, compared to one out of eleven in Portugal.
She said somewhere in the world, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, every minute the 380 women who become pregnant, half are those who did not plan or want the pregnancy while 110 of them suffer pregnancy-related complications. Out of this number, 40 women have unsafe abortions while 10 are infected with HIV/AIDS, she said.
According to her, no woman should die giving birth. Giving women around the world access to contraceptives and family planning, she stated, could reduce the number of maternal deaths by 20 to 35 percent. She urged governments to provide the women with access to skilled health workers during the time of birth and to emergency obstetric care when needed.
To her, it is important to protect mothers because studies have proved that a country's economic and political health can be measured in the health of its women.According to the President of Family Care International, Jill Sheffield, the birth of a child should be a happy moment in a mother's life and not her last moment.
He said the "Women Deliver" conference bordered on safe deliveries and healthy babies, stating that serious investment in women's health and rights enables women to deliver, not just the next generation, but also everything development communities work to achieve.
Other speakers at the conference corroborated the UNFPA boss's claim that the meeting called attention to the tragedy of child and maternal mortality that is not often registered, and will push all concerned to take unified action in a bid to arrest the hoodoo. It was with this perspective that stakeholders unanimously heed the aphorism that it pays to invest in women's health.
Leading Women Killers
According to a release the UNFPA office in Yaounde sent to The Post, the conference participants examined research that outlined the primary killers of pregnant women and proposed some practical solutions.
The research that was carried out for 20 years, reveal that at least 125,000 women die of haemorrhage during child birth each year for lack of access to safe, adequate blood supplies or transfusion.
The release states that hypertension often goes undiagnosed, especially among poor women who receive little preventive or prenatal health care. At least 35 percent of women are said not to receive any prenatal and half give birth with no skilled attendant present in developing countries.
The study equally reveals that about one-third of all pregnancies are unintended. The number is estimated at some 80 million per year, a situation that makes it possible for an estimated 19 million unsafe abortions carried each year most in the developing world.
Nearly 70,000 women die from unsafe abortions each year and millions more suffer long-term illness or disability. It is estimated that in Uganda, post abortion care in hospitals cost the health system 10 times more than elective abortion services by mid-level primary care practitioners.
An infection known as sepsis is common to poor women who give birth at home in unsanitary conditions or in clinics that lack sterile equipment. Obstructed labour and obstetric fistula constitute another health jinx to women's bodies or the bodies of young girls may be immature and too small for a baby's head to pass easily through the birth canal.
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This is true we must campaign against this problem women must be empowered financially as well as be educated to be able to know their rights and take decisions indepently. Gender inequality and the subservient nature or culture of the African woman is the bane of high maternal mortality rate.If women are given the opportunity to develop themselves educationally,financially and socially and also have the support of the manfold then this problem would be reduced to the bearest minimum.I am a lecturer in the department of Nursing Science in the University of PortHarcourt and I intend to conduct a research into theis phenomenon.Thus, it will be appreciated if materials are sent to me to achieve my aim. Thank you.
Josephine Gbobbo