UNICEF highlights new tool to analyze high maternal mortality rates in India
NEW YORK, 7 October 2008:The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is spotlighting the introduction of a new tool in India that is designed to help health-care experts, policymakers and local communities across the country understand the root causes of its high rates of maternal mortality.
The tool, known as the Maternal and Perinatal Death Inquiry and Response (MAPEDIR), has collected data and analyzed the cases of some 1.600 women across six states within India to show the underlying medical and social reasons behind maternal deaths.
An estimated 80.000 Indian women, either pregnant or new mothers, die each year from preventable causes, including haemorrhage, eclampsia, sepsis and anaemia, according to MAPEDIR. Haemorrhage after delivery is the most common cause of death.
Many other deaths go unrecorded because they occur in the anonymity of a women’s homes or when the woman is on the way to seek help at a medical facility. In total, an average of 301 women die annually for every 100.000 live births across India.
Chris Hirabayashi, the deputy director of UNICEF’s programmes in India, said the agency was working with health authorities in selected districts in the six states – Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan and West Bengal – to promote surveillance as a crucial strategy to cut both maternal and child mortality.
Meanwhile, the Indian daily Financial Express reported Wednesday, that over 67 per cent of maternal deaths in eight districts in Orissa were among SC/ST groups. Illiteracy is as much a factor as lack of primary health care. In Purulia, West Bengal , 48 per cent of the women who had died had no formal schooling.
Haemorrhage is the most common cause of delivery-related deaths, with almost all haemorrhages occurring after delivery. In Bihar’s Vaishali, 42 per cent of the deaths occurred due to this. Many women who delivered at home also died from postpartum haemorrhage.
Eclampsia, a serious complication during pregnancy that is attributed to under-developed arteries in the placenta, was the second most common cause of death (17 per cent in Dholpur, 19 pc in Purulia, and 27 pc in Guna/Shivpuri). However, the standard treatment for eclampsia, magnesium sulfate, was often not available in these places.
These are the shocking findings of an ongoing survey across six states being conducted in co-ordination with the United Nations Childrens’ Fund (Unicef).
India is still quite far from achieving the Millennium Development Goal (2015 Målet) of reducing maternal mortality rate (MMR) by three quarters by 2015.
Kilde: The Push Journal
