 12 October 2008
On Sunday The Washington Post ran a major front page feature, “A Woman’s World: The Struggle for Equality Around the Globe,” to highlight the grave statistics about women dying in childbirth.
The articles focus on Sierra Leone, a startlingly poor nation on West Africa’s Atlantic coast, where a woman’s chance of dying in childbirth is 1 in 8, according to the UN. Sierra Leone also has one of the highest fertility rates in the world, with each woman having an average of more than six children.
Women die from bleeding, infection, obstructed labor, and preeclampsia (pregnancy-induced high blood pressure). But in the poor, rural areas of Sierra Leone, a major contributing factor is that many women delay seeking medical care because they don’t fully understand the risks, and are intimidated by the costs and distances they need to travel for care.
“Maternal death is an almost invisible death,” said Thoraya A. Obaid, executive director of the U.N. Population Fund. The issue rarely gets attention from international donors, who are far more focused on global health threats such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV-AIDS.
Photo by Carol Guzy – The Washington Post |
