Why Do Women Die in Childbirth?
Grace Lusiola is Director of EngenderHealth’s program in Tanzania. My mother was 37 years old when she died. I lost her because she had pregnancy-related complications. She experienced difficulties during the seventh and eighth deliveries; she didn’t make it through the ninth. So why did my mother die in childbirth? Mainly this tragedy occurred because she lived in the countryside and there were no trained health providers in her village. When she ran into trouble delivering at home, there was nobody available to offer emergency obstetric care or to transport her the 25 kilometers to the nearest health facility. I also believe what contributed to her death was the lack of access to modern family planning methods that would have enabled her to keep her family small—as she had wanted. Sadly, almost 50 years after my mother’s passing, countless African women are still dying from the same causes. Many women would like to stop or space their pregnancies but don’t have contraception, and in
