Strategy Fails to Reduce Deaths in Childbirth
Strategy Fails to Reduce Deaths in Childbirth
Despite a national strategy in Tajikistan to reduce the number of women dying in childbirth, the situation is not improving. NBCentralAsia experts say that women still do not have proper access to family planning education and maternity care is substandard and expensive.
On World Population Day on July 11, the executive director of the United Nations Population Fund, Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, said that around 1,500 women worldwide die giving birth every day.
Tajikistan currently implementing a national strategy aimed at cutting maternity deaths by 75 per cent in the period 2004-2015. The strategy is part of the United Nations millennium development goals, and means that women in Tajikistan now have free access to family planning clinics and contraception.
But the country’s childbirth mortality record has not improved over the past year. According to the Medical Statistics Centre, 17 women per 1,000 births died in the first half of 2007, compared with 14 per 1,000 over the whole of last year.
These official figures only include women who went to hospital and do not take into account the large number of women who have home births.
NBCentralAsia experts say that widespread poverty, a lack of sexual health and family planning education and costly hospital treatment keeping women at risk.
The cost of maternity care in hospitals is too high for many Tajiks and a large proportion of babies are born at home without access to medicine or emergency treatment.
“Women from poor family are simply afraid to give birth in hospital, as they knowing they’ll be asked for unimaginable amounts of money,” said Gulnisso Murodova, who lives in the suburbs of Dushanbe.
Murodova recently had a baby and her hospital bill came to 300 US dollars even though her family’s monthly income is only 70 dollars.
The director of the National Centre for Reproductive Health, Guljahon Tumanova, says that most women die because they have poor obstetric care, have too many abortions, do not receive help in time when they go into labour, and poor post-natal care.
“Unfortunately, people are often poorly informed about the dangers of giving birth for the woman as well as the child,” said Tumanova.
Women from remote villages who do not have access to ambulance services are most at risk, she says. Increasing numbers of men are leaving their villages to seek work in other regions or abroad, so there are few people left in remote areas who can drive women to hospital.
Muhammadsharif Atoyev, chief consultant at the department for mother and child care at the Tajik health ministry, agrees that women who do not take care of their own health or understand family planning issues are at greater risk.
“Illnesses and deaths occur because… mothers are not in the right physical condition to give birth,” she said.
The average couple in Tajikistan has five children, according to various unofficial sources.
(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)
On World Population Day on July 11, the executive director of the United Nations Population Fund, Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, said that around 1,500 women worldwide die giving birth every day.
Tajikistan currently implementing a national strategy aimed at cutting maternity deaths by 75 per cent in the period 2004-2015. The strategy is part of the United Nations millennium development goals, and means that women in Tajikistan now have free access to family planning clinics and contraception.
But the country’s childbirth mortality record has not improved over the past year. According to the Medical Statistics Centre, 17 women per 1,000 births died in the first half of 2007, compared with 14 per 1,000 over the whole of last year.
These official figures only include women who went to hospital and do not take into account the large number of women who have home births.
NBCentralAsia experts say that widespread poverty, a lack of sexual health and family planning education and costly hospital treatment keeping women at risk.
The cost of maternity care in hospitals is too high for many Tajiks and a large proportion of babies are born at home without access to medicine or emergency treatment.
“Women from poor family are simply afraid to give birth in hospital, as they knowing they’ll be asked for unimaginable amounts of money,” said Gulnisso Murodova, who lives in the suburbs of Dushanbe.
Murodova recently had a baby and her hospital bill came to 300 US dollars even though her family’s monthly income is only 70 dollars.
The director of the National Centre for Reproductive Health, Guljahon Tumanova, says that most women die because they have poor obstetric care, have too many abortions, do not receive help in time when they go into labour, and poor post-natal care.
“Unfortunately, people are often poorly informed about the dangers of giving birth for the woman as well as the child,” said Tumanova.
Women from remote villages who do not have access to ambulance services are most at risk, she says. Increasing numbers of men are leaving their villages to seek work in other regions or abroad, so there are few people left in remote areas who can drive women to hospital.
Muhammadsharif Atoyev, chief consultant at the department for mother and child care at the Tajik health ministry, agrees that women who do not take care of their own health or understand family planning issues are at greater risk.
“Illnesses and deaths occur because… mothers are not in the right physical condition to give birth,” she said.
The average couple in Tajikistan has five children, according to various unofficial sources.
(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)
