Emily
MikeI was watching the BBC World News this morning and saw a segment about the World Health meeting that is going on in Addis Ababa. The WHO has declared that the mortality of mothers during child birth is a “human emergency” and that it’s almost always preventable. The WHO meeting is for health ministers from around the world to discuss what can be done.
The clip that I saw was introduced by saying: “More women die in child birth than in war.” Here is the BBC clip. One of the main reasons that Ethiopian women die during child birth is that C-sections are not performed and, therefore, if a woman has a baby that is too big to be delivered normally, the baby ‘usually dies” and, if the mother manages to survive, she probably will have to live with the dangerous (and embarasing) condition called “fistula,” which is a continuing leakage of urine or feces because of a hole between the bladder and the vagina or the rectum and the vagina. One woman talks about how she was “too ashamed to leave the house because of the smell” and having to “save up for five years” in order to make a long trip to a hospital that could repair the condition.
Filed under: Health, International Tagged: | Ethiopia, Fistula, Maternal Mortality, World Health Organization
