EUROPE/ITALY-The often forgotten battle of mothers who die in childbirth

Rome (Agenzia Fides) - In Africa 4.5 million children under the age of 5 and 265 000 mothers die each year. Most of these deaths are related to pregnancy and childbirth and could be avoided by ensuring basic health care. According to the report of the NGO Save the Children on "The State of Mothers in the World", 48 million women each year give birth without any professional assistance and even without having received any checkups during pregnancy. Two million women give birth to their child completely alone, both for the absence or inaccessibility of health facilities, and because of the ban - for cultural or religious reasons - to ask for help from people outside or to leave home to reach health facilities. The highest percentage of "solitary" births is recorded in Nigeria, where 1 woman out of 5 gives birth alone. The figures concerning the tragic phenomenon of maternal deaths are alarming. In Italy every 100 000 babies born, 12 mothers die for various causes. 2,054 die in South Sudan, 2100 in Sierra Leone, 1,800 in Niger, 1500 in Chad ...
In the world every year 358 000 women die as a result of pregnancy or childbirth (hemorrhage for example) and about 800 000 children die at birth (for respiratory distress, asphyxia or sepsis). We must also add those who die within the first month, for a total of over 3 million deaths in the short span of time from birth to the thirtieth day. For the majority, both for the mothers and babies, these deaths are due to complications and pathologies which are preventable and curable diseases. Unicef's latest figures of 2005 speak of 536 thousand new mothers who die after giving birth, half of them in Africa, 99% in developing countries.
The NGO has estimated that if all births occurred in the presence of midwives or health workers with similar experience, every year the lives of 1.3 million children and tens of thousands of women could be saved . Afghanistan, Niger, Guinea Bissau, Yemen, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Mali, Sudan, Central African Republic are the 10 countries where levels of maternal and child health and conditions of mothers and children are the worst in the world. On the opposite side the 10 countries where the welfare of mothers and children is considered to be the best are Norway, Australia, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, New Zealand, Finland, Belgium, the Netherlands, France. The distance between the first on the list, Norway, and the last country on the list, Afghanistan, is abysmal: in Norway every birth occurs in the presence of qualified personnel while in Afghanistan, this occurs only in 16% of births. One Norwegian woman out of 175 will lose their babies before reaching the age of 5, while at the other extreme, in Afghanistan every woman undergoes the loss of a child throughout her life. Looking at other countries at the bottom of the list, comparisons are no less dramatic: a woman out of 14 in Chad and Somalia are in danger of dying during pregnancy or childbirth. In Italy the risk of maternal mortality is less than 1 out of 15,000 women. (AP) (Agenzia Fides 05/07/2011)