How to Save a Woman

One of the best indicators of a health care system is how many women die whilst pregnant-trying to give birth or a few weeks after. This is called maternal mortality. The reason public health specialists use this indicator is because a successful delivery of a baby and healthy mother requires all aspects of the system to run smoothly. From the decision of the mother to seek care, recognition of complication, access to health facility, transport to appropriate care delivered at the health facility by trained health workers. Pregnancy complications are unpredictable and are fatal therefore a health system which can prevent these mortalities is said to be robust.

The WHO Sustainable Development Goals aim at a maternity mortality rate of 70 per 100,000 live births. In Zimbabwe the rate is 651 deaths per 100,000. In simple terms, this means that about 7 women in Zimbabwe die each and everyday for doing what their bodies were most specially created for – bringing life into this world. This is unacceptably high. Nevertheless this death rate has actually come down over the last 8 years. 

No woman should die giving birth

So who is killing our mothers?

The thing about health care is it is not just about the doctor and nurse who see the mother. It starts in her home, with her relationship with her husband, with her family. It starts when she is a little girl and her parents make a decision to educate her or not. It depends on where she lives, what the roads are like, whether her family has transport money to rush her to the hospital. It is about her religion, whether her church leaders believe in health care sought at an institute. It is about whether anyone told her family what to do if there is an emergency, whether they even know what that looks like. Health Care is about empowerment and education and social justice. Women are dying because they never had a chance. The futile efforts at the hospital may not be enough to save her. We need to get to the basics of our economy, the infrastructure, our education system, our gender equality.

That is how we can save women.

References

1.       The World Health Organisation. Media Centre. Maternal Mortality. Fact Sheet No. 348. (Updated November 2015). Available from http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs348/en/ [Accessed 30^th June 2016]