Pregnancy is not a disease or illness. Yet more than half a million women and girls die every year because of pregnancy, childbirth, and unsafe abortions. Health experts determine that about 75% of these maternal deaths are preventable. Unwanted pregnancy and pregnancy related problems have always been an area of concern for India. In spite of some of the best medical institutes and practitioners, the rate of death of women during child birth is the highest in India. The statistics present a sorry picture for the state of women’s health in the country.
According to reports, in the world, 190 women face unwanted pregnancies every minute. What is even more alarming is that in India, 1,21,000 women die per year owing to delivery related complications. These digits point towards the fact the facilities available for pre-natal and post-natal care is dismal in this country. Almost all the states are affected due to this. The BIMARU states are the ones where the situation is worse than the others. The state of affairs in child birth is incredibly shocking as more than 300 maternal deaths occur for every 100,000 live births in India which is six times worse than that of the neighboring competitor, China.
One of the factors that account for these untimely deaths of mothers and infants is illiteracy. People in rural areas are not acquainted with the modern facilities for child-birth. Owing to this ignorance, they still adhere to the age-old practice of delivering a child at home. In India, 65% of all births occur at home. This, in turn, means giving birth in unhygienic conditions, resulting in complications and eventually deaths. A large percentage of births do not take place under the supervision of trained mid wives, leading to no respite in cases of unexpected complications.
Another reason why the infant mortality rate is so abnormally high in this country is that women go for child-births at regular intervals. Before they can recuperate from the previous delivery, they conceive. This automatically makes them weaker, giving way to complications. If the mother is not hale and hearty, it obviously implies that the child too will be weak. Many times the newborn kid does not survive due to the lack of nourishment and care. This is clear from the fact that for every 1000 live births, 39 infants die.
It has been found that the rates of maternal death are high in the economically weaker sections of the society. With poor nutrition and lack of obstetrics care, most poor women continue fighting for their lives with every delivery. In India, women, on an average, tend to get pregnant very early and have little control over their sexual or reproductive health. Low income makes access to better medical facilities difficult and social customs and traditions make post natal care a taboo.
This was the situation in rural India. In urban areas, what is more common is unwanted pregnancy. These days even unsafe abortion has become a growing concern. Callous teenagers do not bother to use contraceptives, thereby landing themselves in precarious situations. The only option left for them then is abortion. In the world, every minute, 40 women have unsafe abortion. There are innumerable abortion centres in all cities. These are mostly run by untrained physicians who charge nominal rates. More and more teenagers flock such centres, thereby exposing themselves to infections and hazardous diseases.
The Indian government has included private sector hospitals in its schemes to enhance institutional deliveries among below poverty line (BPL) mothers and pay them for each delivery. Most of these hospitals are in urban and semi-urban areas. Needless to mention, under the arrangement certified private hospitals are extending facilities of Janani Express Yojana, Janani Sahayogi Yojana and other health welfare schemes to card holders. State government's attempts to post specialists in rural areas have met with failure over the years and dais conducting traditional deliveries has been banned around a year ago, leaving villagers with no option but to go for totally unsafe, unprofessional delivery at home. India created a flagship program, the National Rural Health Mission, in 2005 to improve rural health, with a specific focus on maternal health. But the system is not working as it should in many cases, Human Rights Watch research showed.
It must be remembered that pregnancy is the happiest phase of a woman’s life. Let us all strive to make it enjoyable for her rather than turning it into a curse. The best part of it all is that all pregnancy related problems are preventable and cost only US $2. Hence, we must try to mitigate this problem as much as possible and set an example for other developing countries.
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