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Determinants of Maternal Mortality in the Developing World
Author(s) -
Stokoe Usha
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
australian and new zealand journal of obstetrics and gynaecology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.734
H-Index - 65
eISSN - 1479-828X
pISSN - 0004-8666
DOI - 10.1111/j.1479-828x.1991.tb02754.x
Subject(s) - medicine , obstetric transition , pregnancy , childbirth , poverty , maternal death , neglect , developing country , referral , malnutrition , disease , sanitation , socioeconomic status , abortion , mortality rate , environmental health , obstetrics , population , family medicine , nursing , maternal health , genetics , pathology , biology , economic growth , economics , health services
EDITORIAL COMMENT: We accepted this paper for publication because it considers the contribution of socioeconomic and cultural factors to maternal mortality in developing countries. These issues are relevant to much of the world's population and so should interest readers. There is also a useful bibliography of papers for those who wish to explore the subject further. It is of interest to reflect that the original prime aims of antenatal care (prevention of anaemia and preeclampsia), that still need to be introduced in some developing countries, are now pursued with less vigour than in the past in so‐called developed countries. there were 83,402 confinements and 7 maternal deaths in hospital, and 14 other pregnancy‐related deaths within I year of delivery. In the Tibur Anbessa (Black Lion) Teaching Hospital in Addis A baba, during the 6 years 1980–1985, there were 22,404 livebirths and 216 maternal deaths in hospital‐. These maternal mortality rates differ by a factor of 120 (0.08 per 1,000 versus 9.6 per 1,000). A recent ‘Newsletter of Worldwide Activity in Maternal Health’ slates that ‘mothers are not dropped from heaven, they are born as undervalued, neglected girls and grow as exploited, uneducated children’ ‐ this publication lists in its ‘fact File’ that ‘In Africa, 1 in every 25 girls reaching menarche will die as a result of pregnancy or childbirth’ and that ‘In South Asia, women face a lifetime risk of maternal mortality of 1 in 38’. Although teaching hospital statistics do not present the national maternal mortality rates, they are useful for purposes of comparison, being readily available, and the contrast is stark: At the Mercy Maternity Hospital, Melbourne, during the 18 years 1971–1988.