Fatmata Conteh Research Paper

According to UNICEF, maternal mortality in Haiti is 35 women out of every thousand; neonatal healthcare is equally abysmal, with 3.1 percent of newborns dying within the first month after birth. Most of the maternal and neonatal deaths are considered largely preventable, given adequate healthcare resources. Accessibility to these resources is another important issue, with less than 36 percent of pregnant women giving birth in any healthcare facility.

One way to destroy the vicious cycle of high birth rates is to empower women through social change, specifically, education. There is a proven connection between the education level of a mother and how many children she will have, statistically. In the United States, birth rates of women with less than 12 years of total education are more than triple their college-educated counterparts. This can logically be applied to Guatemala’s situation to find that if more women are educated, not only in school, but in proper child care and contraception use, their Total Fertility Rate should rapidly decrease to a more sustainable level. This is a one-two punch: not only will women have less children, the ones they do have will likely be raised more effectively and are less likely to die of disease in infancy. Guatemala must engage in a campaign to enroll more girls in school. This will be difficult, due to the culture of the country. Women are expected to stay at home and work the fields. Culture must shift to make progress, as it so often does.

Childbirth is one of the greatest privileges on the earth anyone could have and we, as women, should feel proud to be major contributors for it. Thus, a mother has to play a key role in aiding the healthcare workers to mitigate the health crisis associated with childbirth by performing her duties faithfully. One such associated health crisis is “Premature (preterm) birth” which occurs when the baby is born too early, before 37 weeks of gestational period (CDC, 2015). The rate of preterm birth ranges from 5% to 18% of babies born across 184 countries (WHO, 2015).

Maternal mortality represents more than the loss of lives for individual women, as it also reflects the larger value and prioritization of women 's health and threatens the health and survival of families, young children, and even the communities in which they live (Royston and Armstrong, 1989). Maternal mortality is unacceptably high (WHO, 2015b). Globally, approximately 830 women die every day from pregnancy- or childbirth-related complications (ibid.). The causes of maternal mortality are predominately preventable and can be classified into three fundamental causes: (1) medical - consisting of direct medical problems and pre-existent/coexistent medical problems that are aggravated by pregnancy, (2) underlying - social and legal conditions, and (3) health systems laws and policies that address availability, accessibility, and quality of reproductive health services (PHP et al, 2011).

Pregnant mothers are viewed as a business made for doctors and hospitals as insurances typically cover infant birth and hospital bills. As Patricia Burkhardt, Clinical Associate Professor, NYU Midwifery Program could not speak the truth any better, she states, “Hospitals are a business. They want those beds filled and emptied. They don’t want women hanging around the labor room.”

Watson and Mason’s article, “Power of the first Hour” and Risworth, et al.’s article “I was on the way to the Hospital but I Delivered in the Bush” both focus on aspects of maternal and infant care and demonstrate the fundamental differences between western policies enacted to improve women’s lives in developing countries and the local realty in those developing countries.

Furthermore, modern abortion procedures are extremely safe. So safe, in fact, that the risk of a woman dying from an abortion is less that one out of 100,000. On the other hand, the number of women who die during childbirth is 13.3 out of 100,000. Access to legal, professionally performed abortion reduces both injury and death caused by “back-alley” abortions. These back-alley abortions account for 68,000 maternal deaths a year in the 33 countries where abortion is either not legal, or unavailable (World Health Organization, Oct. 2006).

Economic growth has much improved the infant mortality rate though better healthcare facilities and living conditions. Japan has fallen to one of the world’s lowest infant mortality levels at 3.6 per 1,000 live births in 2006 (Saigusa, 2006). Infant mortality is largely affected by the health of the mother, which makes pre-natal health imperative in keeping infant mortality rates low. Since Japan offers health care to all, access to prenatal care is easier to get therefore making mothers healthier and help in finding complications earlier in the pregnancy.

Maternal Mortality tells the story of Mama Seesay her family and friends, as well as all childbearing women in Sierra Leone and sub-Saharan Africa:

In the United States giving birth has become medicalized and it is because the medical community has convinced women that having a baby in a medical facility is mandatory and better for the baby. Medial birth is not natural birth. The American populace is uneducated about the natural process of labor. The overwhelming amount of women having babies in hospitals is unique to the United States. Most other nations including first world nations, women give birth in the presence of midwives rather than a doctor. According to experts documented in the film, “The United States has the second worst newborn death rate in the developed world.” Also “The US has one of the highest maternal mortality rates among all industrializes countries.” The makers of this film link those fact with the common practice of hospital birthing. According to the film makers, Doctors should only be used in high risk pregnancy and births.

Centre for Maternal and Child Enquiries (CMACE) (2011) Saving mothers’ lives; reviewing maternal deaths to make motherhood safer: 2006-2008. BJOG 18(1): 1-203. London. Blackwell Synergy.

The fifth goal is to increase maternal health in countries with a focus on reducing the maternal mortality rate by three-fourths and universal access to reproductive health both by 2015. Despite a 43% reduction in maternal deaths since 1990, there are still a large number of women who die during childbirth from preventable causes such as hemorrhaging (United Nations, 2015, p. 38).

World Health Organization. (2011, November). More midwives needed to improve maternal and newborn survival. Retrieved October 25, 2017, from

The main reason women want birth control is to prevent pregnancy. During the course of just nine years, the amount of women that wanted birth control to prevent pregnancy jumped from 716 million to over 850 million(“ThinkProgress”). Not only are women hesitant to have children because of poverty, but also because of fatal deliveries. For instance, some African countries, such as Nigeria, have very poor maternal conditions. Moreover, according to NPR, in a lot of third world countries where there is overpopulation, “studies show higher risks of premature birth, pregnancy complications and delivery problems, as well as higher death rates.”

In 2013, 289 000 women died during pregnancy and childbirth and it was estimated that everyday 800 women all over the world died from childbirth or childbirth-related problems (World Health Organization, 2014). Often, maternal mortality is found to occur more often in developing countries than developed countries. Maternal mortality refers women who died from the situation like during pregnancy, termination of pregnancy within 42 days, regardless of duration and place of pregnancy, from aggravation caused by the pregnancy or pregnancy management (Nwagha et al, 2010). Maternal mortality may be resulted from direct or indirect cause. Direct causes are from obstetric complications of pregnancy, labour, and puerperium, and interventions whereas indirect causes are from the worsening of current conditions by pregnancy or delivery (Givewell, 2009). This paper aims to examine the causes for maternal mortality in both developed and developing countries and will end with a proposal for government to ensure women are given reproductive health rights.