By: Anisha Akhtar, WEC Marketing Coordinator
Pregnancy is not a disease.
This was the message our speaker, Dr. Aaliya Bibi, conveyed throughout her talk at our Inequities in Maternal and Child Health seminar. Pregnancy is the leading cause of death for girls aged 15-19 years worldwide and a staggering 800 women die everyday due to pregnancy related problems. 99% of these deaths occur in developing countries.
To put things in perspective, Canada, with all its advanced technology and a world-class health care system, still ranks 20th in terms of maternal mortality. Maternal mortality is defined as the death of a woman while pregnant or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy, irrespective of the duration and site of the pregnancy, from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy. On top of the list are countries like Norway and Sweden with virtually every delivery being attended by a trained professional. On the other extreme are countries like Afghanistan and Niger where 1 in every 7 pregnant women loses her life. Most common complications during pregnancy in these developing countries are infections, severe bleeding, eclampsia, unsafe abortions, obstructed labour and indirect causes like malaria or heart disease.
The main reasons behind these horrific consequences are the 3 delays: Delay in seeking help, delay in reaching help and a delay in receiving help. Dr. Bibi demonstrated these problems through the following example:
A pregnant woman named Jamilah starts getting dizzy and breathing problems but ignores them as simple fatigue (1st Delay). After a community health worker convinces her family that this is a serious problem, the family starts preparing to take Jamilah to the hospital. However, her husband is not home and the family has no money. Some money is borrowed from the neighbours but now there’s no vehicle to carry Jamilah to the paved road heading towards the hospital (2nd Delay). Many hours later, the family finally reaches the hospital but the required Oxytocin is not available at the facility and most of the hospital staff has already gone home (3rd Delay). By the time the medicine is acquired and the staff is reached, Jamilah is no more.
All the problems displayed in this heartbreaking story are absolutely preventable through simple, cost effective interventions like training community health care workers in emergency and obstetric care, informing expectant mothers about signs of complications, raising awareness in homes and communities, providing safe and affordable transportation and finally equipping health care facilities with proper supplies and more trained staff.
As members of a community which is doing far better in maternal health care, we have the responsibility to help the rest of the world better themselves. The Women Empowerment Club has tried to exercise some of this responsibility through raising awareness about such a critical issue and will continue to do so because healthy mothers and healthy children are the backbone of a healthy country.