March 10, 2010

By the Limmat at Unter-Letten. We all got some spring feelings last week but this week they are all gone, the snow is back together with an icy cold wind.

Monday 8'th of March was the international women's day. It didn't get so much coverage in Swiss media but more in the Swedish, wonder if that is somehow significant of the women's roles in the different societies? Anyway, one of this years themes was maternal mortality. This is luckily no longer a problem in our part of the world where we over the last 100 years managed to get the mortality rate down to quasi zero. Today 99% of the deaths related to childbirth is in the developing countries where out of 100'000 pregnancies over 1000 finish in death for the woman compared to 7 in Switzerland. One of the worst countries is Niger where every 7'th woman dies due to pregnancy related complications. Apart from not having access to proper health-care a part of these deaths are related to illegal abortions and female genital mutilation. Another part is also related to the low age of the mothers forced into marriage as adolescents, in many countries in Africa maternal mortality is the primary cause of death for women between 15 and 19 years old.

When I consider the childbirth experiences of my own friends, I would estimate that two of them would definetely have died 100 years ago or if they were living in Afghanistan. One or two would have had life-threatening conditions. Living in the "right place at the right time" they could all go home from the hospitals with healthy babies four days later.