The difficult birth this week of a new baby girl to one of our staff has reminded us of the stark differences between becoming a mother in the rich world and in the poor world. The difference is not so much that having a baby is without risk for rich-world women: ask your colleagues and neighbors about their own experiences of childbirth and you’ll be surprised how many dramatic stories emerge. In my own case, a flawless pregnancy suddenly turned life-threatening due to pre-eclampsia at 32 weeks gestation.
The difference is in how childbirth happens – and how frequently it can mean death for a developing country woman. Had I been a poor woman in a developing country, the chances are good that neither me nor my twins would have survived. The lifetime chance of dying from maternal causes is one in 61 for women in developing country. The same risk has a probability of 1 in 2800 in the developed world (PRB, 2005) . Wherever they live, rich women benefit from better health and pre-natal care that greatly improve their chances for safe delivery. But childbirth can still be a terrifying experience.
To see a graphic example, watch the video on maternal health from the Survival series produced by BBC News. It tells the stories of women in Bangladesh through pregnancy, childbirth and the first years of their children’s live, and the challenges that they face during this critical, yet vulnerable period in their lives. The full 10-part series is continuing through the end of November on BBC TV and available in short videos. Here’s the series schedule:
4 October - Survival: Neglected Tropical Diseases
11 October - Survival: Sleeping Sickness
18 October - Survival: Malaria
25 October - Survival: Maternal Health
8 November - Survival: Child Survival
15 November - Survival: HIV/TB
22 November - Survival: Acute Respiratory Infections
29 November - Survival: Worms
29 November - The World Debate: Survival Health Debate
Former CGD resident fellow, Jeremy Shiffman, has written frequently on how to achieve greater political priority to maternal health and advances in measuring and responding to maternal health conditions are being made. You can read a Q&A with Jeremy based on his recent presentation at WHO and access his Lancet paper here.
The recent maternal mortality initiatives are gratifying, but they seem awfully distant from that experience in the operating room with lights, beeping instruments and technicians. Even further from the childbirth experience of poor women in developing countries.
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