Saving mothers and babies

By Rina Jimenez-David
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 22:39:00 01/03/2009

WE have just six years to go before the formal reckoning of our country's commitment to end poverty by 2015. If you will remember, all UN member-states pledged in 2000 to meet the Millennium Development Goals: to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality and empower women, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability and develop a global partnership for development.

UN agencies in the Philippines, assessing developments in the country's march toward meeting these eight goals, have said that while we are on our way to meeting most of the MDGs, we are lagging in the achievement of universal primary education, with about 30 percent of school-age children unable to finish their elementary education; in the struggle to reduce the incidence of HIV/AIDS; and in the improvement of maternal and child mortality.

Why are we failing to save the lives of our mothers and babies? A major reason is the lack of commitment to maternal health, which also affects the health of fetuses and newborns. Mothers whose health have been compromised, either by malnutrition, disease or any of the "toos"—too young or too old, too many children, pregnancies too close together—run the risk of dying during pregnancy or at childbirth, delivering underweight babies and risking their survival at birth or infancy.

"Three delays" have been identified as playing crucial roles in the death of a woman during pregnancy or childbirth: delay in making the decision to seek specialized care; delay in reaching a facility that provides emergency obstetric care; and delay in the woman's receiving appropriate care in the facility. Thus, bringing down the maternal mortality rate depends not just on the number and availability of trained attendants like midwives but also on other factors like transportation, a system of roads, existence of facilities, availability of drugs, supplies, blood and equipment.