In Bangladesh, 12,000 women die needlessly every year as a result of the complications of pregnancy and childbirth. We have the knowledge and technology to prevent most of these deaths. Progress has been made in reducing maternal deaths in Bangladesh, but it needs to be faster and it needs to benefit more poor people.
2007 marks twenty years since the launch of the global “Safe Motherhood Initiative.” The goal of the initiative was to cut the deaths of women in pregnancy and childbirth by half. Through remarkable efforts, including ensuring many men and women have access to family planning, Bangladesh has gone a long way to achieving this goal. Other countries can learn from the experience here, which demonstrates what can be achieved when there is strong leadership and commitment.
But the fact remains that in Bangladesh a woman dies every hour from complications of pregnancy or childbirth. This is clearly unacceptable, and it can certainly be avoided. When a woman dies in childbirth, wherever she is in the world, the consequences for her family, her community, and her country are dire and far-reaching. Children lose their primary care-giver and communities and countries are denied are denied of a valuable and productive life. I believe that investing in women’s survival makes sense morally and it also makes economic sense.
With twenty years of study and experience since the launch of the global safe motherhood campaign, we know much more clearly what some of the technical solutions are. At the heart of these is the overwhelming evidence that, without the ability to provide emergency care for women with complications, deaths in pregnancy and childbirth cannot be substantially reduced further.
Every single pregnancy is at risk from such complications, and renewed efforts are needed to overcome the “three delays” that many women here face in getting emergency care:
* The first potential delay is in a women and her family deciding to seek appropriate help when she has a complication — they may not be aware of the danger signs that mean she needs urgent medical care, for example heavy bleeding. They may fear the hospital, or the costs they might incur in going there.
* The second delay can occur in actually reaching the clinic or hospital, through lack of transport or the means to pay for it.
* The third potential delay is in getting appropriate care at the health facility. Women may have to wait, the right staff, drugs or equipment may not be available, and there may be difficulties in obtaining safe blood supplies.
I have heard from colleagues here about some of the incredibly sad stories of preventable deaths caused by one or more of these delays — 20 year old Asma who didn’t have the money or means to transfer from home to a hospital where she could get the caesarean section she needed to save her life. Shahti, who had convulsions in pregnancy, and couldn’t get the life-saving drugs she needed to save her and her baby.
In the time it has taken you to read your newspaper this morning, another woman will have died in Bangladesh due to the complications of pregnancy or childbirth. That death could have been prevented.
From households, to health services, to development partners, to policy makers, we all need to pool our collective knowledge and our action to ensure that we really do deliver “safe motherhood.” The government of Bangladesh is investing around $3 billion (Tk 20 crore) over seven years in the Health, Nutrition and Population Sector Program to make safe motherhood a fact of life. The UK is glad to be supporting this effort, along with many other donors and development partners.
One of the initiatives being taken through the government’s health sector program is a voucher scheme for pregnant women. The scheme aims to help overcome some of the delays women face in accessing services, by ensuring that, along with their families, they learn when they should seek help, they can afford the transport to get them to a hospital, and that there is no barrier to them getting the treatment that they need when they arrive.
This innovative voucher scheme is currently being implemented in 21 upazilas. So far, more than 22,000 vouchers have been distributed, and more than 350 women have used them to access care for complications — that’s 350 women who might otherwise have suffered at home or struggled to find the payment they needed for drugs or services. Last week, at the inviation of the Honourable Adviser to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, I visited Sakhipur, one of the Upazilas where the scheme has recently started. I saw for myself the interest of women in this scheme and how they are already benefiting from it.
With this and other efforts, much is already being achieved. We know what needs to be done to accelerate progress. We owe it to the women of Bangladesh, and all mothers everywhere, to ensure that women don’t continue to die needlessly.
Popularity: 2% [?]
