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A series of low-cost measures to make childbirth safer could save the lives of two million mothers and babies worldwide by 2030, a leading charity says.
Progress in reducing maternal mortality worldwide has stalled since 2016, in part due to the disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said on Tuesday. In some countries, including the United States and Venezuela, maternal mortality rates have increased in recent years.
With nearly 800 women dying in childbirth every day, the foundation calls for “immediate action” to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: Reduce maternal mortality By 2030, 70 deaths per 100,000 births will be achieved, reducing neonatal mortality to at least 12 deaths per 1,000 births. Current projections are for 138 maternal deaths per 100,000 births by then, nearly double the target. .
Foundation co-chairs Melinda French Gates and Bill Gates outline seven “innovations” and practices – many of them low-cost and provided by midwives and birth attendants – that could prevent postpartum complications Death from complications of childbirth such as hemorrhage, sepsis, and other infections. They added that measures such as increased use of antibiotics and anemia treatment including micronutrient supplements could save an additional 2 million lives by 2030 and 6.4 million lives by 2040.
“Policy changes,” the report said. . . More investment in women’s health and care workers, including midwives, is needed to reduce maternal mortality.
Low- and middle-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and elsewhere have made “tremendous progress” in reducing childbirth mortality, Mark Suzman, chief executive of the foundation, said in launching the report. He said preventable child mortality had more than halved between 2000 and 2015, with fewer than 5 million dying each year.
He said progress first slowed and then stalled “in large part due to the Covid-19 crisis” which had “disrupted health systems and restricted funding”.
The report points out that 18 key indicators in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals – from poverty to gender equality, education to food security, health to climate – may not be achieved by the 2030 target.
But if health authorities implement the recommended innovations and increase the use of vaccines or malaria bed nets, “then it is absolutely possible to reverse the setback and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals,” Suzman added.
Professor Bosede Afolabi, director of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Lagos, Nigeria, said at a press conference that supplementing micronutrients for anemic women during pregnancy can reduce the number of stillbirths by about 21% and low birth weight by 19%, while also reducing six-month infant mortality rate to a “significant extent”.
As many as 37% of pregnant women worldwide are anemic. The report pointed out that in some places in South Asia, this proportion is as high as 80%.
In a trial in sub-Saharan Africa, use of the antibiotic azithromycin reduced sepsis cases by a third. French Gates added that it could also be a game-changer in the United States, where 23% of maternal deaths are caused by sepsis and where “one of the most inequitable maternal mortality rates among high-income countries is “.
Robert Yates, director of the global health program at London think tank Chatham House, said Covid-19 has exposed the problem of insufficient investment in global health. While he welcomed investment in the interventions recommended by the Gates Foundation, increased funding for infrastructure, workers, ambulances and commodities is also needed.
“If we are to see improvements in maternal mortality, the international community can help,” he said, but added that “significant increases in domestic public financing will have an impact”.
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