Global deaths from childbirth
An international campaign to cut all global deaths amoung women during childbirth has made no progress after 15 years.
Experts suggested that governments have seeked a 'silver bullet' solution to solve the problem rather than building up desperately needed local health services. It is estimated that 500,000 maternal deaths happen each year around the world with no measures in place to reduce this figure.
Anne Starrs, vice-president of Family health International commented: "You cannot give a woman a pill to prevent an obstetric death. You need a fully-functioning health system. People have been looking for a silver bullet and it doesn't exist."
Twenty years ago, the World Health Organisation launched its Safe Motherhood Initiative but the Millenium Development Goal, a campaign to cut the maternal death rate by 75 per cent between 1990 and 2015 isn't anywhere close.
Deaths of mothers in childbirth are almost unchanged from 1990 and in 2005, 536,000 women died because of complications from pregnancy and labour. It is estimated that 99 per cent of the deaths take place in the developing world and in Sub-Saharan Africa, more than 900 women die for every 100,000 live births. This rate is 100-fold higher than in Europe where the death rate is nine per 100,000 births.
Figures show that where women have access to family planning, contraception and abortions, maternal deaths fall by a third and child deaths fall by 20 per cent. The amount of abortions taking place globally has also fallen from 46 million to less than 42 million, as access to contraception has improved. Legal restrictions still mean that half of all abortions are unsafe and that they killed one woman every eight minutes.
Beth Frederick of the International Woman's Health Coalition in New York said: "One fact stands out: safe and legal abortion saves women's lives. There is no acceptable reason to allow women to die, fall ill or become infertile as a result of an unsafe abortion."
Thanks to The Independent, 12/10/07
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Last Modified: 12/10/2007
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Gosh what a really interesting article. It is terrible that this is still happening throughout the world - with all the technology available and scientific advances. It boils down to money in the end, and the ability for some countries to train and pay for doctors and medical staff. If anyone has any ideas of how we can show out support for this, please let me know.
Having read this article, it made me think about how many times our own maternity units are criticised - at least we know we have a good chance of surviving the birth of our babies. Still shocked that illegal abortions will kill a women every eight minutes... shocking!
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