Every year more than half a million women die from pregnancy and childbirth-related complications – 99% of these occur in developing countries. Africa has the world’s highest ratio of women – 1 in 16 – who die in pregnancy or childbirth.
The major direct causes of maternal death and illness include haemorrhage, infection, high blood pressure and obstructed labour.
Teenage childbearing significantly contributes to the risk, as do unsafe abortions. Indirect medical causes are those that weaken pregnant women’s immune systems – HIV/AIDS, malaria, viral hepatitis, TB, diarrhoea, tetanus, heart disease and sickle cell disease.
Health services are often inaccessible and women can’t afford them. Many women in developing countries receive no antenatal care during pregnancy, half give birth without a trained attendant and 70% receive no post-natal care.
Beneath the medical causes of maternal death lie other factors: poor education, low social status, lack of income and employment opportunities, and nutritional problems before, during and after pregnancy.
Maternal death or disability is not just a personal, family or community tragedy. Poor maternal health is serious threat to Africa’s economic development. If there are no interventions to reduce the current rate of maternal deaths and disabilities in Africa, over the next ten years, $45 billion worth of productivity will be lost.
How AMREF is improving maternal health
AMREF is working directly with communities to improve maternal health. This includes:
- improving access to health services including family planning, safe obstetric care and midwives
- preventing and treating malaria in pregnancy
- improving mothers’ nutrition
- raising awareness of personal and food hygiene, basic sanitation and improved access to clean water as essentials for good maternal health.
We are also working with communities to deal with the indirect causes of maternal ill health, including:
- the prevention, care and treatment of HIV/AIDS through awareness raising about the illness, HIV testing and counselling, antiretroviral therapy and control of ‘opportunistic’ infections, including TB and sexually transmitted diseases
- protecting women’s reproductive rights, including promoting women’s rights to make informed choices about family planning and childbirth, and protection against gender-based violence.
In South Sudan AMREF is running midwifery courses to provide desperately needed skills, and in Msorwa, Tanzania is training women in maternal health issues – reducing the death rate from 39 in 2004 to 7 in 2006.