India Faces Reminders of Failing Maternal Safety
India Faces Reminders of Failing Maternal Safety
When the World Health Assembly convenes May 18 in Geneva, public health campaigners will try to highlight something very wrong in India: the high number of poor and marginalized women still dying of preventable causes linked to childbirth.
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This mother, in the state of Chhattisgarh, was able to access health services.Credit: Swapna Majumdar
NEW DELHI (WOMENSENEWS)--Pregnant with her first child, 17-year-old Guna did not know she was anemic. Nor was she aware of the complications this could cause because no government female health worker or nurse ever visited her village, located in an inaccessible part of the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh. When she began to hemorrhage after delivering her child at home last year, her family tried to arrange for a vehicle to take her to a health facility. But Guna died before they could do so.
Guna's death in September 2014 became known through an investigation by an alliance of nongovernmental organizations. It is among the roughly 44,000 preventable maternal deaths that occur in India every year.
It's also a reminder of the country's conspicuous failure to meet Millennium Development Goal No. 5, under which countries, 15 years ago, pledged to cut their maternal deaths by one-third between 1990 and the end of 2015.
The White Ribbon Alliance in India, a coalition of individuals and organizations, is working with International Planned Parenthood Federation, Plan India, Family Planning Association of India and Save the Children to keep the problem on the international radar. It joins a 30-country global campaign gathering steam ahead of the annual World Health Assembly, the legislative body of the World Health Organization, which convenes in Geneva from May 18-26.
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http://womensenews.org/story/reproductive-health/150509/india-faces-reminders-failing-maternal-safety
