Thursday, March 21, 2013

Blog # 7: Nigeria accounts for 10% of global maternal deaths – Expert


Nigeria is responsible for ten percent of the maternal deaths in the world.  This ranks them among the highest in the world.  They are second only to India with 145 maternal deaths every day during delivery or soon thereafter.  Even though Nigeria has taken actions to reduce this rate, there have not been any positive results from the efforts.  Oluwarotimi Akinola, the Charmin of Society of Gynaecology and Obstetrics, blamed the lack of improvement of these rates on the lack of access to health facilities, poverty, illiteracy, and women’s refusal to seek the help available at the health facilities when they are able to receive it.  People, as a result of high rates of illiteracy, are not informed about the health issues associated with child berthing. 

This article relates perfectly to what we are discussing this week in class.  We have examined the global population, its staggering increase in such a small amount of time, and the factors that have contributed to it.  Women are the nucleus of the issue of high rates of maternal deaths.  Women in developing countries are more prone to death during or shortly after delivery because they have so many.  These women have so many children because the healthcare is so poor or nonexistent where they are from that they already know that a couple of them will not live to see the age of five, and in order to keep the family going into the next generation more children must be made.  Women that are not educated are prone to having more children and thus increasing her chances of maternal death in developing countries because less educated women have nothing more to do than be a caretaker of the home.  Statistics show that when women are more educated they are inclined to have better healthcare which means that the child has better chances of surviving and resulting in the woman having less children.  This in turn reduces her chances of dying while delivering or shortly after.



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