Maternal deaths should be treated as a human rights issue and governments need to focus on best antenatal practices and provision of emergency obstetric care to bring down the number of maternal deaths, says Professor Sir Sabaratnam Arulkumaran, president of the International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics (FIGO).
Many factorsSafe motherhood is often the confluence of a multitude of factors — good antenatal care and doctors trained in emergency obstetrics are important, but ensuring accessibility to these services is a challenge for most low-resource countries.
Despite its wealth, the U.S. is ranked 49 in the world in maternal mortality ratio (MMR) because of the inequities in health care, Dr. Arulkumaran says.
He was talking to The Hindu , while on a visit to the city recently to attend the annual international conference of the Trivandrum OBGYN Club
“A proper maternal ecosystem should be in place – maternal health should be a top priority for governments, with initiatives that provide appropriate, affordable, accessible care, along with a tough system of maintaining accountability— if the lives of mothers are to be saved,” he says.
FIGO has been supporting governments, especially in poorer parts of the world like Ethiopia and Mozambique in Africa, to adopt the best ante-natal practices and other affordable strategies for improved reproductive health of women.
Suffering in silence“Millions of women in Africa undergo difficult childbirth and obstructed labour due to the lack of skilled birth attendants and they suffer silently the consequences of obstetric fistula. FIGO is supporting a number of ‘fistula hospitals’ and training surgeons in the region in repairing fistulas,” he says.
While India may miss the Millennium Development Goals of reducing its MMR to 105 per one lakh live births by 2015 – the current MMR is 178 – some parts of the country, like Kerala and Tamil Nadu, have made remarkable progress in bringing down maternal deaths.
“By preventing unplanned pregnancies and by offering safe abortion services, MMR can be brought down by another 15 to 20 per cent,” he says. Maternity units should adopt the concept of Maternity Dashboard, which is a clinical performance and governance scorecard, to improve maternal care, says Prof. Arulkumaran, who introduced this method to improve the quality of care delivered by hospitals.
“It helps identify patient safety issues in advance so that timely action can be instituted to ensure a high-quality, safe maternity care. It helps hospitals set targets and monitor their performance and identify their problem areas. Many hospitals in India have begun to adopt this practice,” he says.
