Worldwide, a Push to Reduce Complications of Pregnancy
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Cheerfully painted bellies were part of the celebration last month when pregnant women in Lima, Peru, celebrated "Healthy Maternity Week." Light-hearted activities, such as pageants that awarded strollers as prizes, contrasted with the sober message underlying the event: Around the world, 1,500 women die each day from complications during pregnancy, according to UNICEF, most of them in developing nations.
"It's poverty, lack of access to emergency obstetric care, lack of access to safe abortions," says Laura Castleman who serves on the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists' Committee on International Affairs. "We have the technology . . . and the deaths are completely preventable," she adds, but "we're not valuing women's lives enough."
However, "a number of countries are making good progress," says Mary Ellen Stanton, senior maternal health adviser for the U.S. Agency for International Development. Her group works with 30 countries, including Indonesia and Sudan, Stanton says, and some of them have seen maternal mortality decrease by 20 to 50 percent over a 10-year period. This is crucial, experts say, because a mother's death can have a snowball effect, harming surviving family members and the community at large.
-- Kathleen Hom
