One Mother Dies Every Second Of Every Day: Learn The Facts

Can you imagine a world in which one mother goes missing every minute of every day? According to UNICEF, we're living in it.

More than 500,000 women die unnecessarily every year, due to complications from pregnancy and childbirth. Almost all of those deaths occur in developing countries and could be prevented.

It's hard to imagine what kind of impact this death on this scale has on babies, families and communities around the world. But with a recent video from Human Rights Watch, we can understand the effect that one mother's death had on her community in India:

Global Voices Online has compiled a great series of short videos on what we can do to better understand this worldwide issue and how to address it.

These videos, by different human rights organizations, go beyond numbers to tell us the stories of women and their families as they struggle to understand why it is that so many women are dying during childbirth and what needs to be done to stop this.

One piece done by The White Ribbon Alliance -- an international coalition that promotes public awareness of safe pregnancy and childbirth -- has a great rundown of the most essential maternal mortality statistics. It also explains how providing women in developing countries access to medical facilities and trained medical professionals can reverse this deadly trend. (It's worth the 4 minutes just for the video's clever use of text):

To learn more about how to prevent maternal mortality and see UNICEF's "5 Steps" to diminishing this problem, check out the post at Global Voices Online.