USAID Administrator Blames Discrimination Against Women in Africa Reason for High Maternal Mortality

In a wide ranging speech at NIH this week, USAID Administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah went to bat for African women, especially mothers-to-be, who are 135 times more likely to die during childbirth than some of her Western counterparts.
 
 “I've given a lot of thought to why this is the case. I've heard many experts say that reducing maternal mortality is too complex, that it's too difficult to achieve in countries where most women will really never see the inside of a – of a Western-style hospital. But I really cannot escape the conclusion that our current state of affairs where a pregnant African woman is 135 times more likely to die during childbirth than some of her Western counterparts exists simply because she is, in fact, a woman. And this is unacceptable,” said Dr. Shah.
 
“When a child cannot get a vaccine and dies of a preventable disease, it really does offend our conscience. When an AIDS patient cannot access or afford lifesaving treatment, it affronts our dignity. But when a woman in the developing world dies during childbirth, we too often consider it a fact of life. Too often, we find it somehow acceptable,” he said.
 
Dr. Shah predicted that this year alone more than 350,000 women will die in pregnancy and childbirth. He said that USAID had asked each of its 28 missions in the “highest-burden maternal mortality” countries to implement best practices that include:
  • Addressing the significant unmet need for family planning and preventing 54 million unintended pregnancies by 2016;
  • Implementing new approaches to counseling to help women ensure healty timing and spacing of births; and
  • Giving women capable support structure built around trained birth attendants and community health workers.
“Development professionals spend a lot of time extolling the virtues of investing in women and girls, and USAID is no different. But when it comes to maternal and neonatal mortality, we must ensure our investments, our scientific inquiries and our politics live up to our rhetoric,”  he told the audience.
 
To support USAID in its effort, Knowledge for Health hosts a number of products to help address maternal and new born care, including:
The mortality rates of pregnant women in many African countries are really unacceptable.  Hopefully, with health information tools such as these, we can help support the effort to reduce maternal mortality and create a more equitable world.
 
Stephen Goldstein is a Senior Consultant for the Knowledge for Health Project, which is funded by USAID and implemented by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Communication Programs (CCP), Management Sciences for Health and FHI.