childbirth Archives

I wanted to share a great post today on World Mom’s Blog, where I’m a writer and contributing editor, on a fantastic organization founded by Kristyn Zalota called Clean Birth. We all know that in developing countries having a safe birth for mother and child is not a given. In fact about 800 women die around the world every day due to complications during and after childbirth.

Photo credit: Wikipedia Free Commons.

Here are some facts from the World Health Organization that demonstrate how unacceptably high the numbers are:

99% of all maternal deaths occur in developing countries.
Maternal mortality is higher in women living in rural areas and among poorer communities.
Young adolescents face a higher risk of complications and death as a result of pregnancy than older women.
Skilled care before, during and after childbirth can save the lives of women and newborn babies.
Between 1990 and 2010, maternal mortality worldwide dropped by almost 50%.
However, In 2010, 287 000 women died during and following pregnancy and childbirth.
Almost all of these deaths occurred in low-resource settings, and most could have been prevented.

Please stop by and check out the post today, “$5 Saves 2 Lives” as well as our mission to raise enough money to fund 1000 clean birth kits. Let’s give all women the chance for a healthy and safe birth!

“We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen.” – Paulo Coelho

Photo credit: Maternity Worldwide

The figures are startling. Every year around the world 287,000 women die in what should be the most joyous time of life: Having a baby. That means one woman dies every 2 minutes or 800 a day, during pregnancy and childbirth.

As a mother of two children who suffered two high-risk births, I can’t even begin to imagine what it would be like to be pregnant in a developing nation. It is not surprising that the majority of women (over 56% of the total) who die are in sub-Saharan Africa, a region of the world that is engulfed in extreme poverty. When you compare the mortality rates to women in the Western world, 99% of all deaths take place in the developing world.

In Ethiopia alone, one of the poorest countries in the world, 90% of women give birth at home and for every 100,000 women who give birth in the country, 676 women die from delivery and childbirth complications. Further accentuating the problem in the fact that Ethiopian women, who have little or no access to family planning or contraception, have on average 4.8 babies who survive. These numbers alone put women at high risk of dying and not living to see their babies grow up or raise the others.

Thirdeyemom

Traveling the World and Doing Good

Tag: childbirth