It seems to happen all the time on Little House on the Prairie. A healthy woman goes into labor. Then, the face of the doctor or midwife goes pale. Cue to a commercial. The next scene is the mother’s funeral, her husband holding a newborn while the preacher offers up a prayer.
A tragedy so common in the nineteenth century should have gone the way of the horse and buggy. Instead, I was shocked to learn that women continue to die in childbirth at an alarming rate, here in the United States and around the world.
Complications from pregnancy and childbirth killed 540 U.S. women in 2004, the highest since 1977, reports Jill Sheffield, president of the women’s rights organization, Family Care International. She calls the maternal death rate of 13.1 per 100,000, “scandalous” for an industrialized nation. The United States ranks 36th of 181 countries in maternal deaths, behind Poland and just ahead of Bulgaria, she writes on the organization’s Web site.
Internationally, the picture is far more grim. In sub-Saharan Africa, the death rate is one in sixteen. In Afghanistan, pregnancy is almost a death sentence. One in six women dies in pregnancy or childbirth.
The issue was addressed at a London conference in October. Women Deliver drew more than 1,800 participants from 109 countries. The goal was to make the elimination of maternal deaths a high healthcare priority globally.
Many who attended, including California democrat U.S. Representative Lois Capps, vowed to do better.
“We may have dragged our feet a bit in the U.S., but we are going to hold hearings and we’re going to create a workable strategy on behalf of women,” Family Care International quoted the congresswoman as saying at the conference. “We’re going to make sure that the U.S. participates in a global effort to deliver for women around the world.”
For many advocates who have spent years trying to push maternal mortality to the forefront, the Women Deliver conference was seen as evidence of long-awaited upturn.
“There is momentum now, politically and public-wise,” says Katia Iversen, a spokeswoman for the United Nations Population Fund. “Countries don’t want to be shamed. They don’t want to be the country where a woman dies just giving birth. If shame is what it takes, then that’s what it takes.”
