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Malawi loses one expectant mother every hour: minister
Xinhua General News Service
2005-10-12

Malawi's Health Minister Hetherwick Ntaba has said that the country is losing one expectant mother every hour during childbirth or due to pregnancy complications.

"Malawi's maternal mortality rate now stands at 1,800 per 100, 000 live births making it the third worst globally," said Ntaba during a press briefing that he addressed in the capital Lilongwe to mark this year's Mothers Day, which fell on Monday, October 10.

The World Health Organization states that Malawi 's maternal mortality rate is the third worst after Sierra Leone and Afghanistan .

Ntaba said Malawi 's maternal mortality rate had shot up from 620 in the 1980s to its present rate of 1,800, which the minister described as tragic and shocking.

The minister said Sierra Leone and Afghanistan had every reason for having high death rate of pregnant women because the two countries have had wars for so many years while Malawi had been at peace in the past 40 years.

"There must be something we are doing wrong and we have to change," said Ntaba.

He attributed the rising deaths of pregnant women to the use of traditional concoctions especially in the country's rural areas, which were resulting into unsafe abortions and rupturing of uteruses.

Ntaba said his office would in early November unveil a roadmap for reversing the development by ensuring that basic emergency obstetric care is available in all the country's health centers.

"We have already purchased 48 ambulances and 54 more will be in the country before Christmas," he said.

Speaking at the same briefing, Dorothy Lazaro, a program officer at the local office of the United Nations Population Fund described childbearing in Malawi as a sad occasion.

"Child birth is supposed to be a joyous occasion but to most mothers in Malawi it becomes a very sad occasion which tears families apart," she said.

Malawi 's Health Ministry has in the past month intensified its campaign to bring awareness to the country's rural areas where such deaths were very high.

The Ministry's senior official, Jonathan Nkhoma, told Xinhua that all traditional leaders are being informed to make sure that every pregnant woman in every village is getting antenatal care from health facilities close to them.

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