POPULATION: Maternal Mortality Meet Set For Morocco

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 25 1997 (IPS) - Doctors from around the world are to meet in Morocco next month to debate ways to combat maternal deaths during childbirth.

The Mar. 8-14 World Congress seeks to bring together some 70 international health experts to debate a wide range of topics connected to maternal mortality, including medical ethics, contraception, and abortion, says Dr Frank Chervanek of New York’s Cornell Medical Centre, who heads the Congress’s scientific committee.

But organisers complain they have little in the way of funds to plan the meeting. They say the congress is already short of half-a- million dollars needed for expenses.

Dr Daniel Weinstein, a doctor at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Centre, says that Morocco’s King Hassan has supported plans to convene the World Congress in Marrakesh, but only two governments — Switzerland and Norway — have contributed funds. The two countries have contributed 100,000 dollars each to defray the costs of the meeting.

Weinstein criticised governments and agencies, including the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and World Health Organisation (WHO), which he claimed had not supported his plans to convene a congress of doctors to debate ways to combat maternal mortality.

“More people are dying through the process of (birth) delivery than in all the wars together,” Weinstein said Tuesday, citing U.N. statistics that one million women, almost all from the developing world, die in or from childbirth every year. Another 45 million women each year are made to suffer physical handicaps throughout their lives because of complications during childbirth, he added.

“Many organisations are trying, at least talking, about helping to reduce (maternal) deaths,” Weinstein said. “But from all these organisations, we didn’t get one dollar…You want to know my guess (why they didn’t lend support)? They don’t care.”

But some at the United Nations has not heard of the World Congress.

Madeleine Eisner, a spokeswoman for UNICEF, told IPS that she had not heard of the Congress prior to a press conference staged by Weinstein at the United Nations Tuesday.

WHO spokeswoman Celinda Verano pointed out that her organisation had been one of many U.N. agencies forced to cut back on its budget in recent years. “It’s not that we don’t care, it’s that we don’t have the money,” Verano said.

Carla AbouZahr, a scientist at WHO’s Reproductive Health Programme, said that the organisation was apprised of Weinstein’s project two years ago, and tried to help by providing as much information on safe motherhood practises as it could.

“We greatly welcome the fact that some very eminent gynecologists and obstetricians are coming together” to discuss maternal mortality, AbouZahr told IPS. But WHO is not a funding agency empowered to donate money to projects by non-governmental groups, she added.

“Maybe (U.N. agencies) just don’t have the resources to give to non-governmental organisations,” agreed Ambassador Abdeslam Jaidi of Morocco. The need to mobilise more resources in the fight against maternal mortality should be addressed in the congress itself, Jaidi said.

But the main problem, Weinstein insisted, is more a lack of world attention than any lack of technical resources.

The main causes of maternal mortality, the doctor said, are tied to such problems as a lack of care given to pregnant women admitted into hospitals, or the young age at which many women give birth especially in the developing world. From such causes, he said, women are made vulnerable to haemmorhage, hypertension, diabetes, infections from hospitals, and liver and heart disease.

The rates of maternal mortality vary dramatically throughout the world, he added. In Somalia, he estimated that one out of every seven women dies during childbirth, compared to one out of every 14 in Cote d’Ivoire and one out of 17 in Cambodia. By contrast, one out of every 400 women dies from childbirth in China; one out of 3,500 in the United States; and one out of 4,000 in Israel.

Meanwhile, the U.N. agencies are also doing their part to commemorate 10 years of U.N. activity to combat maternal mortality, AbouZahr said. WHO, UNICEF, the U.N. Development Programme, the U.N. Population Fund, the World Bank and several population agencies are joining together to sponsor a meeting in October in Sri Lanka to bring together experts on safe motherhood practises, she said.

“Safe motherhood is clearly a priority for WHO and other agencies,” AbouZahr said, noting ongoing efforts to accumulate information about maternal mortality and to train midwives on safe motherhood. “There’s a lot going on,” she said, although she added that mortality rates have remained high regardless.