Mothers-to-be face death in Zimbabwe

Hundreds of pregnant women in Zimbabwe face death because of a near-total collapse of health services, Save the Children warned today

Thursday 4 December 2008

Speaking from Harare, Rachel Pounds, a Save the Children Country director, said: “Zimbabwe is in the grip of a life threatening health crisis. A hungry nation is being wracked by a huge cholera outbreak. At the same time, state hospitals are without sufficient drugs or staff and, in many cases, are actually closed.

“However, there’s another, unpublicised health crisis afflicting hundreds — if not thousands — of pregnant Zimbabwean woman.”

Ms Pounds said that most of the main state hospitals in Harare were now unable to provide emergency obstetric services, like caesarean sections.

“It’s been reported by the UN that 700 women were recently told to return to their referring clinics as they couldn’t access maternity services in Harare hospitals. While firm information is impossible to come by in Zimbabwe at the moment, I believe this is likely to be the case across the country and that most state health services are in a state of collapse.

“This means that any woman requiring a caesarean or some other form of emergency assistance at a state hospital won’t be able to access care. Both she and her child stand a very high risk of death. “

Ms Pounds said the implications on maternal mortality were alarming.

“Like many of the more than five million Zimbabweans who need food aid today, many pregnant woman will be undernourished and unwell, increasing the risk of their babies being born underweight, which reduces the baby’s chance of survival following birth.

Many women will also require caesareans due to complications in labour. If they don’t get them, the babies will die from foetal distress and the mothers will die from haemorrhage.”

Ms Pounds said another likely cause of death would be in cases where the afterbirth did not come away after birth. “It is a simple procedure to sort this out. But without medical attention the mother will die, leaving an orphan behind. This is an obvious tragedy in any circumstances, but Zimbabwe today is no place for a baby to be without a mother.”

Save the Children staff in Zimbabwe are feeding hundreds of thousands of people and providing basic health care, including medical assistance to pregnant women. But, Ms Pounds warned, the international children’s charity was struggling to find sufficient equipment to help mothers-to-be needing emergency attention.

Save the Children has launched a global appeal to raise money for its work in Zimbabwe.

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