Childbirth kills one woman every seven minutes in India

INDIA: A woman dies every seven minutes in India because of complications during pregnancy or childbirth, the government said in a report Saturday.

The number of women dying each year from pregnancy and childbirth is 77,000, the Registrar General of India said in a report, three times higher than a government target.

Some 301 women in 100,000 births die each year due to “pregnancy-related complications” despite the government’s goal of bringing the mortality rate below 100, said the registrar general.

“In other words, one woman is dying every seven minutes due to complications related to pregnancy and childbirth,” said the body which records births and deaths.

Rundown maternity services and near-absent mother-and-childcare centres and rural health facilities contributed to the huge death rate of mothers, the body said.

The report came after India’s ruling Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi said on International Women’s Day on Thursday that problems faced by women could not “be seen in isolation and their development is linked to the national economy.”

The report added: “Despite all the maternal health programmes and improvement in primary healthcare system, very few states are close to this desired figure (of keeping the mortality rate below 100 per 100,000 births).”

Federal ministry officials blamed the states for not doing enough to improve maternal health care.

“The national target is to keep the mortality rate to below 100 per live births but laxities by states in upgrading their (health) facilities is making it difficult,” said an unnamed government official quoted by the Press Trust of India.

The report said that Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state with 170 million people, had the highest maternal mortality rate with 517 deaths per 100,000 live births.

The southern state of Kerala, the only Indian state to boast 100 percent literacy, came nearest to the national target with a figure of 110 deaths per 100,000 live births, the report said.

The mortality rate has actually climbed in many states during the past five years, the report added.

In 1999, there were 220 deaths per 100,000 live births in Uttar Pradesh — less than half the current rate.

Rises were also seen in the southern state of Tamil Nadu which has a mortality rate of 134, up from 79, and the western state of Gujarat with 172, up from 28.

India last month hiked its federal annual outlay for health by 22 percent to 11.36 billion rupees (2.5 billion dollars) with special emphasis on the welfare of children and women as well as on efforts to contain the spread of HIV/AIDS.

“But the cascading effect will be visible only if state governments too hike their respective health budgets,” said health expert Shimoni Sinha.

(AFP)