Maternal Mortality : Risk Factors, Anthropological Perspectives, Prevalence in Developing Countries and Preventive Strategies for Pregnancy-Related Deaths

Pregnancy is a life-threatening event in many parts of the developing world. Globally, it is estimated that 289,000 women died from being pregnant in 2013. The lifetime risk for dying as a result of pregnancy is as high as 1 in 6 for women living in the poorest nations of the world. Ninety-nine percent of all maternal deaths occur in resource-poor nations, averaging 800 deaths each day or 33 per hour. Improvement in maternal mortality was addressed by the United Nations in 1990 by the Millennium Development Goals (MDG's) in which the 5th goal was global reduction of this statistic by three-quarters by the year 2015. However, this goal will not be achieved. For every mother that dies from pregnancy in resource-poor countries, 15 to 30 additional women develop serious damage. This textbook addresses the continuing problem of maternal deaths in developing nations from three perspectives: medical, anthropological, and epidemiological. The twenty-eight internationally-respected authors in this textbook have had direct field experience with maternal health and pregnancy complications in resource-poor regions. They provide up-to-date analysis of maternal deaths in the regions of the world most affected by this public health problem. These locations include Asia, South America, and-most severely affected-Africa. Prior to this publication, specialists in the fields of obstetrics, epidemiology, and socio-cultural anthropology have rarely shared and combined their insights into maternal death causation and prevention. This book combines the experiences and opinions of: anthropologists nurses midwives physicians epidemiologists staff of national Ministries of Health public policy advisers members of international organizations These individuals collaborate to inform the reader of a multi-specialty approach to understand the difficulties of improving maternal mortality in developing nations. These twenty chapters are extensively highlighted with color photographs, tables, charts and maps to illustrate the statistical and geographic aspects of the author's opinions and experiences. Not only is this the first published textbook to address maternal death in many years; it is the first to examine it by using a combined anthropological-medical-epidemiological approach. This book belongs in libraries of anyone working in the areas of maternal health, pregnancy complications and mortality in developing nations.