A new study says that the num­ber of deaths due to child­birth out­num­ber child deaths due to malaria or AIDS. Over 2 mil­lion chil­dren and moth­ers die from child­birth complications.

The study says that this is due to lack of med­ical care and pro­fes­sion­als in rural areas. Most of the deaths occur in remote vil­lages in Africa or South­ern Asia where there are no skilled health workers.

From this Asso­ci­ated Press arti­cle that we found at WISN, writer Celean Jacob­son reveals the sta­tis­tics. For more infor­ma­tion on poverty effects on child birth can be found at the Inter­na­tional Fed­er­a­tion of Gyne­col­ogy and Obstet­rics website .

The study, released Tues­day at the Inter­na­tional Fed­er­a­tion of Gyne­col­ogy and Obstet­rics world con­gress being held in Cape Town, also showed that such deaths could be eas­ily avoided.

“The world will con­tinue to miss the unheard cry of the 230 babies who die every hour from child­birth com­pli­ca­tions,” unless there is bet­ter plan­ning and imple­men­ta­tion of poli­cies, accord­ing to the study.

Some 1.02 mil­lion babies are still­born and another 904,000 die soon after birth. By com­par­i­son, 820,000 chil­dren die from malaria and 208,000 die from HIV/AIDS worldwide.

About 42 per­cent of the world’s 536,000 mater­nal deaths also occur dur­ing child­birth, accord­ing to the study. Deaths in Africa and South Asia account for three-quarters of the mater­nal and infant deaths.

The research was led by Save the Chil­dren, the Gates Foun­da­tion and Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­sity with inves­ti­ga­tors from a dozen coun­tries. It was pub­lished in the Octo­ber edi­tion of the federation’s jour­nal.
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The report said that many of the deaths could be avoided with improve­ments in basic health care, and train­ing for local health care work­ers to per­form emer­gency cesarean sec­tions and other life­sav­ing tech­niques.
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Poverty is one of the main causes of these deaths. In wealth­ier coun­tries most women give birth with a skilled atten­dant while in poor coun­tries, few women do.

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