India pregnancy deaths 'needless'

Alexa Williams
10/8/09
12:52 PM

This article focuses on the northern state of Pradesh in India. Here there are a huge number of women who die during childbirth. This state has one of the worst health care systems within India and this is believed to be the cause of the unnecessary deaths. The rest of India has made efforts to reduce maternal mortality by insuring poor women will receive health care. They have also offered cash incentives if the mother chooses to give birth in a health facility instead of at their home. However, monitoring of this is very low and there is no accurate record of how many women are dying each year during childbirth.

I think that providing awareness for these women, especially about the actual number of women who are dying instead of having it remain unreported, is essential in bringing an end to this problem. It is very sad that women are dying in Pradesh in such large numbers without any real effort to stop it. The rest of India’s health care systems for the most part take care of this problem, but it is terrible that Pradesh can’t take these same measures to put an end to unnecessary deaths in their own state. Dying during childbirth when there are adequate facilities offering help to the poor is absurd and there needs to be public awareness in these places for those women.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8294132.stm