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‘Scandalous lack of care’ kills 600,000 women
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| 6 May, 2007 |
ABOUT 600,000 women die annually due to a “scandalous lack of effective care during pregnancy and labour” Dr Cathy Lennon, of MaterCare International, has told a Sydney Catholic Women’s League luncheon.
Support of aid organisations such as MaterCare, however, can help prevent this shocking mortality rate, she said.
MaterCare International, introduced to Australia in 1999, is committed to helping mothers and babies in the Third World by providing medicine and life-saving equipment, as well as training for midwives and doctors.
Catholic Women’s League Australia has been supporting MaterCare through a national fundraising project, Mothers and Daughters in Action.
Dr Lennon spoke about the severe complications affecting mothers in the Third World.
“The risk of a mother dying as a direct cause of pregnancy in labour in Africa is one in 13. The risk in neighbouring East Timor is one in 20,” she said.
“Most of these women die in terror from haemorrhage or in agony from an obstructed labour.”
Often those who don’t die suffer long-term damage to their health, such as an obstetric fistula, Dr Lennon said.
Obstetric fistulae occur in very young mothers as a result of neglected obstructed labour.
As well as the baby dying, it results in the mother becoming incontinent due to bladder damage, causing her to become a social outcast.
“The pain, humiliation and lifelong debility that these women suffer is really incredible. There are tens of thousands of these poor, young, forgotten mothers throughout Africa,” said Dr Lennon.
“The tragedy is most of this mortality and morbidity is preventable with proper maternity care.”
MaterCare, through its international organisation of health professionals, is working to overcome such tragedy through crisis intervention, education, research and advocacy.
Dr Lennon said it was also “trying to give skills to the local doctors and nurses for the long term.”
To find out more about MaterCare International visit www.matercare.org
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