Maternal Mortality

With the eyes of the world on New York for the 64th General Assembly of the United Nations, we welcomed more than 300 of the world's most influential women for dinner Wednesday night. The topic of conversation was an issue that needs to be at the top of every world leader's agenda - maternal mortality.

Each year, more than a half million women lose their lives from complications arising before, during, or after childbirth. Almost all of these deaths occur in the developing world, and almost all of them are preventable.

Behind these statistics are the stories of promising lives cut short and of the motherless children left behind. For the women who joined us last night and for all others around the globe, maternal mortality is not just an abstract issue. It's a personal one. And in the stories that follow, we would like to share our personal perspectives.

Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah

Last year, 60 million women around the world gave birth without professional care.

More than half a million of them died.

Think, for a moment, about that number. One woman. Every minute. Every day.

They are women like Sharifa, just 23, from Afghanistan, whose delivery was obstructed, who screamed in pain as her relatives tied her to a ladder, and carried her, for hours, to a clinic, only to be told to go to hospital 200 kilometers away. Her husband had to rent a car, and drive along roads so dirty and pitted that she choked on dust and fainted. When she was resuscitated, she was told that her baby was dead, and she wouldn't have any more children.

But at least Sharifa is still alive.

Aishat, from Nigeria, was not so lucky. She had her first child at just 16. By 33, she was pregnant for the ninth time, in a mission to deliver a prized male child. Following 36 hours of labor, she bled to death, at home.

It doesn't have to be this way. Women don't have to keep dying like this. And little girls don't have to grow up wondering if their lives will end when they give birth.

The hard work of making this a reality doesn't start in contractions, or even conception, it starts in the classroom. If we can get girls into quality schools, they can become part of the solution.

The child of a literate mother is 50% more likely to survive past the age of 5, and when girls finish quality secondary and higher education, 84% of them will give birth with skilled medical help, more than twice the rate of mothers with no formal education.

When you educate a girl, you kick-start a cycle of success.

It makes economic sense. It makes social sense. It makes moral sense. But, it seems, it's not common sense yet.

Wendi Murdoch

I grew up knowing my mother had killed her mother. A tragedy: yes, but in those days in Xuzhou, China, dying in childbirth was just a fact of life. And, sadly, it still is in many parts of the world. Today, one woman dies every minute during pregnancy or childbirth, according to the World Health Organization. More than a million children -- like my mom -- are left motherless each year. It's a travesty when simple, cheap interventions could have an immediate impact on maternal mortality.

Access to emergency medical services, health education, family planning and contraception could prevent 80 percent of maternal deaths for less than $1.50 per woman in the 75 countries where 95 percent of maternal deaths occur. Think about it: we could save a woman's life for less than the price of a subway ride. So, why aren't we doing it?

I have two daughters who I pray will grow up to have beautiful children of their own and never experience the fear I associated with pregnancy. But there are millions of women around the world who continue to be gripped by that terror every day. It's time to put an end to it. Shame on all of us if we don't.

Indra Nooyi

Where I was born in India, pregnant women receive months of pampering from their mothers and other family members. Because my mother received this care during her pregnancy with me, she was there to give me the same treatment when I gave birth to my two children in the United States.

I often think of the women who are not as fortunate - those who must give birth without a trained medical worker, a doting mother, or a loving family member at their side. Who comes to their aid?

For all too many women around the globe, the answer is no one. They are left to face childbirth all alone not knowing whether they will survive. This is a fate that no woman should ever have to face.

As women, we share a special passion for this issue. But it should not be our issue alone. We need to make men our partners in progress. We need to teach all people to cherish the women in their lives. And we need to work together with governments and organizations to build a future where no woman needlessly dies while bringing new life into this world.

We have the resources and knowledge to achieve this vision. Now is the time to use them.

Comments

[Lilabell135]

And wasn't it Senator Kyl who stated during healthcare debates this past week, that since "he couldn't get pregnant and didn't require maternity care" that he didn't think he should have to pay for it?

This is what we women are up against - here in the U.S.A. Imagine what women in undeveloped nations must face.

[Culturegeek]

Kyl also supported a Constitutional amendment banning abortion, even in cases where the health of the mother would be in danger and voted against funding to fight teen pregnancy.

[ElkoJohn]

Empathy, compassion and a desire to help others doesn't require religion,
only a good heart.
Problem is,
those with good will don't have power,
and those with power don't have good will.

[momtotwo]

After giving birth to twins almost 7 year ago I got an amniotic fluid embolism and almost died from complications, lots of blood loss, ending up in icu. If not for the first rate care I recieved here in the US I would have died for certain. I think it is often overlooked, that while giving birth is a natural event, it is one that is dangerous and a critical time when women need access to healthcare. I hope this article helps to get the word out how important this issue is, not just to women but to everyone.

[LMPE]

Equally as tragic as the number of women who die in childbirth is the number of people in the US who believe that the earth is only 6,000 years old.

[Alexander-Y]

Affordable healthcare coverage would help discover abnormalities during pregnancy, but someone's husband owns a media empire bent on destroying anytime of meaningful reform.

An excellent article on why healthcare reform is crucial to women.

http://www.poconorecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090914/NEWS04/909140309

[Ventoi]

Religion takes away choice for health and life.

A baby is natural...

without INTERFERENCE.

Where is it that we are having to choose between our child's health and life and ours (and their impending) religion?

[Ametista]

If govt would get the religions (EVERY ONE OF THEM) out of our health care we would be able to provide all of those women with birth control. A woman with 9 kids will never be anything but dependent and poor.

[DubyaGump]

Mrs. Murdoch a liberal, who would have thought . . .

[dteg]

Who knows. I need to see much more of a fight for humanity. The jury is still out.

[Guytar]

Queen Rania of Jordan, Wendi Deng Murdoch and Indra Nooyi are putting their fame to good work here.

This is a global life and death issue, and these three women are speaking from personal experience.

I respectfully tip my hat to these three ladies.

[terramartom]

Religion is women's great enemy.
Religion keeps all females repressed and takes away any choice for health, and life.

http://www.richmonk31.blogspot.com

[Christina Lane]

I note that you state men as "physically more dominant" than women in your blog presence. As a woman who measures 5'8" tall since the age of 13, having towered over the average male contemporary until well int high-school, I **beg** to differ. Factor in the more diminutive on average Asian population and you are at a serious statistical disadvantage in legitimizing your take on this issue.

Vast areas of lifestyle are being ignorantly disregarded in this biased take on religion. Considering all the blame on the evils of religion, and the vitriol that is so often directed at faith from left-wing extremists, one might wonder why all the focus on pedophiles has been directed at religious organizations when this disease appears to be a symptom of child abuse in every strata of society— particularly among faithless people who do not wish to be held accountable for their crimes against children. So many of them nesting within the confines our "liberal" educational facilities, it would appear! It's only natural I would get resistance from such people. But remember, I speak for ALL faiths, *including* those of Indigenous people.

[Lavina]

Not all religions. But those, that oppose birth control information in schools and with foreign aid, do.
I grew up in The Deciples of Christ Church. We studied the Bible in church, but we did our own reasoning.

[proudem]

I know a minister with your religion and you are right...they utilize faith and reason. I am agnostic myself, but were I to delve into a religion, this is one that I would give serious consideration. Good for you!

[kmdippenger]

My daughter works for an NGO in a rural village in South Sudan. Her job is to enable displaced refugees find a sustainable existence. Working in this village are 2 Christian men who have been hired as public health professionals. I can't begin to explain the conflict that exists, it's impossible for these men to use the science of health care when they don't believe in it. It's further complicated when it involves issues of a woman's reproductive choice, they are entirely ruled by ideology.

[hasheville]

This is not a therapy site. Thanks to the authors for revealing theses tragic facts. Now let's do something about it.

[Christina Lane]

Getting to where something is actually accomplished requires diplomacy and outreach. Nobody established appears to be willing to invest in that. To devalue such contributions casts doubt on the concerns you express on other topics, such as toxic vaccines. People are not outraged because they are FRIGHTENED, STRESSED, and CONFUSED. People from ALL WALKS OF LIFE, I might add.

We can continue to shoot down anybody who tries to counter that, and make these charity activities about keeping our money— and poisoning our own grandchildren— or we can keep quiet unless we have something of value to contribute, and understand that not one of us has all the solutions. Money cannot buy insight, and fake compassion solves nothing!

[researcher]

too much money in medical care in america

profits from the sick and needy over people

and we call our selves a christian nation yea right

chrisitiantiy died on the cross in america

that is what we should be writing about

we cannot save the world or can we

we prefer wars for profits for the few

if we americans look into a mirror we would see imperialists

most dont look for a variety of reasons

[SusanStoHelit]

Without insurance - I'd likely be one of those maternal mortality statistics.

I had gestational diabetes - and excellent insurance - so they monitored me. When they noticed I wasn't gaining weight - they did a blood workup, found my liver enzymes out of balance. After a fair bit of discussion, monitoring, it was finally diagnosed as a very early case of AFLP. My enzymes were monitored weekly, as was fetal progress, and fortunately she matured fast enough to be ready when my liver started to blow up. An early induced labor, and both of us were fine.

Without the monitoring - it would have gone undetected, my liver would have been destroyed, and one or both of us would be dead.

[madtom]

The people who disagree with the comments of these three women in America are the SAME people who don't support female literacy in the developing world.

It's the the usual suspects -- the religious and social big ots, who seem to be behind EVERY social evil, anytime, anywhere.

Make no mistake -- America has its own Tali ban, and we only play THEIR game by foolishly tolerating them.

[dteg]

Love the message but suspect of the messengers. I have seen more of a love of money than humanity from some of them and the two loves do not generally go together.

[TRex86]

I did my med school and internship before Rowe v. Wade. We had wards full of young women dying from complications of criminal abortions. I briefly cared for a 17 year-old whose septicemia destroyed every red blood corpusce in her body after a coat-hanger abortion. Since that dreadful era several causes of death in young women have disappeared from this country. No matter how "distasteful" the thought of abortion may be I don't think we can return to an era where the death penalty is imposed on young women who don't want to carry a pregnancy to term.

[Christina Lane]

I'm going to have to agree with you on that, sir.

[pinkibus]

Trex - if only one could be sure that religion will not force such a terrible fate on women. Religion is the force which holds women down and makes them the dependent tools of men who can and have done everything from beating them to death to forcing them to have sex and carry lifethreatening pregnancies to term. religions - all of them are anti female and primitive suspicions.

[TRex86]

I believe a large problem of Western Civilization (which includes the Abrahamic religions, Islam, Judaism and Christianity) is that the religious texts are a grab-bag of conflicting values. The Old Testament in particular is a festival of horrors. In addition these religions tend to evangelize, considering themselves the Chosen People, which connects insufferable self-righteousness to outmoded ideas. Perhaps there were good anthropological reasons for male domination when we were hunter-gatherers, but we're ten thousand years beyond that. Just the last century showed that our religions are at best irrelevant to human behavior, having done nothing to prevent a bloodbath that consumed at least 250,000,000 innocent lives. Such violence in the service of strange ideologies is also abundant evidence of widespread testosterone poisoning. Maybe for the next millennium the women should take over.

[Ametista]

Oh I love it when men actually understand these things. We shouldn't have to die if we don't want to be pregnant. Delivery and childbirth are terrifying, even today. I wouldn't have survived either of my children's births without first-rate emergency facilities, and so help me God no one has the right to make me suffer through that again.

[111]

What some politicians would like us to forget is that medically safe abortions have always been available to upper middle class and wealthy women - they simply left the US.

In particular I remember headline news in the early 1960s when Sherri Finkbine, a Romper Room host in Arizona was refused an abortion so she went to Sweden to abort the fetus that was deformed by thalidomide.

The legality of abortion does not determine whether or not women will have abortions, it determines if the lower classes will have a safe abortion.

[34MillionFriends]

I am cofounder of 34 Million Friends of the United Nations Population Fund which gives to Americans the chance to actually DO something about maternal mortality. Please visit www.34mill­ionfriends­.org Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas Kristof of the NY Times and his wife journalist wife Sheryl Wudunn is a marvelous book for understanding gender inequality at a deep level. It is number 9 on the NY Times best seller list right now. Chapter 8 by golly is Jane Roberts and Her 34 Million Friends. The world is actually paying some attention to the issue of maternal mortality. There will be a WOMEN DELIVER conference on this subject in Washington DC in 2010.

[Christina Lane]

As my readers know, I am not a huge fan of the New York Times… and so far as doing something, a writer ought to know that writing IS doing something. It must be nice to profit from one's writing, even if the people who are publishing the supposed solution are a major source of corruption to begin with.