Victoria Phillips
9/11/2010
4:11 pm
Pakistani women are at a huge risk of complications after the floods. Out of the 18 million people that have been affected, 70 percent of those people have been women and children. The World Health Organization estimates that about 500,000 women are pregnant and about 32,000 of those women will have complications. “Complications mean death rates in childbirth are high, at 276 per 100,000 compared to 11 per 100,000 in the U.S. And that number was already double in Pakistan's poorest rural areas, where flooding has washed away what little people had and cut off access to roads.” Close to 80 percent of women give birth at home on their mud floors and usually without a skilled birth attendant. Then, if the baby makes it through the birth, only one in 20 make it through their first month alive. To get help, pregnant women have to crawl through murky water with snakes and scorpions around them just to get to a boat to take them to a bus station. Then, they have to ride at least two buses to get to proper care. However, most wait until it’s too late for help.
I believe there should be more help going to help with this flood. They need immediate aide to get these women and children out of these poor conditions and into a safe shelter. I also think that there should be people from the WHO helping to educate these women on how to have a birth properly to help with all these complicated pregnancies.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iph9v3A9lz6q09NVSAJZ2TkQp1zAD9I5QG900
1 comment:
I also agree that there should be some sort of class that women are able to take to help educate them about giving birth. This is such a difficult article to read, because of all the aid we have around us in the U.S. When we can just call 911, or drive to the closest hospital to receive help. The fact that they have to crawl through water, take different buses just to get to to the hospital is very disconcerting.
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