Hannah Grace Miles

December 7, 2009
Final Project
Professor Doris Cacoilo

Maternal Mortality

Maternal mortality is one of the most important, and one of the

most overlooked, issues regarding women’s health. The disparities

between maternal mortality rates in developed countries and

developing and underdeveloped countries are staggering. The chance

of a woman not surviving childbirth in the United States is quite rare.

Yet for the majority of the rest of the world, a woman getting pregnant

can often be a death sentence. There are lists of reasons why these

inequalities exist, which range from lack of resources, to financial

ability, to poor government infrastructure, to the lack of trained health

professionals. The most devastating part this problem is that 90% of

maternal deaths could be prevented. The conditions that result in

maternal mortality are not seen in the developed world, which proves

that if the resources were present everywhere, these deaths could be

prevented everywhere.

In recent years awareness has been brought to maternal

mortality through the use of the media. A number of important people

and organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO) have

campaigned to bring the media’s attention to this issue. In 2005, the

WHO held a workshop in Bangkok entitled “Increasing Media

Awareness on Maternal and Child Health Issues.” The region of

Southeast Asia has the second largest maternal mortality rate in the

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world (behind Sub-Saharan Africa) so having the workshop there

showed the region’s interest in bringing the issue to light. The report

from the workshop outlines the need for media attention to these

issues and how the media and organizations like the WHO can work in

conjunction to bring about awareness.

In the opening pages of the report, the WHO identifies that a

mother dying has profound effects on her children as well as the

society she lives in. “In some developing countries, if the mother dies,

the risk of death for her children under age five is doubled or tripled. In

addition, because a woman dies during her most productive years, her

death has strong social and economic impact as her family and

community lose a productive worker and a primary care-giver.”1 The

introduction also goes on to say that all media, both print and

electronic, play an important role in forming public opinion and driving

public action and therefore it is important to inform media

professionals about these issues. The objectives of the workshop were,

“To familiarize journalists on key issues related to maternal and child

health, and to identify activities that could be done by the media to

help the cause of maternal and child health.”2

The workshop also identified journalists as agents of change and

is therefore enlisting their help to raise awareness regarding women’s

health issues. “Journalists are powerful agents of change and can

illuminate the darker areas of the present reality. They have the power

to make news and shape local and international agendas. But power
1 WHO Media Workshop Report, p.1
2 WHO Media Workshop Report, p.2
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also has responsibility. It is thus important to go into the heart of

issues with rigour and seriousness and present news and information

not often published, and, indeed, often concealed.”3 By reminding the

media personnel present at this workshop of the power they have, the

workshop was asking them to delve into this issue as a way of offering

relief to the women who die needlessly while giving birth. The

workshop also acknowledges that news and information surrounding

this issue is often not published4, which gives the present journalists an

opportunity to report on something different but equally as important

as other news.

The workshop also included group work in which the media

professionals were asked to come up with ways to get information out

about maternal health issues. It also became apparent during the

workshop that it wasn’t a lack of interest on the part of the media

toward these issues, but rather a lack of knowledge.5 If the media, who

act as a gateway to information for the rest of the population, don’t

know anything about an issue then it is hard to believe any other

ordinary person is going to find out about it. As part of the workshop

the WHO screened its Great Expectations Series, a series which follows

six mothers around the world through pregnancy, childbirth and raising

a baby.6 The workshop was deemed a success and left the media

professionals who participated with new information and new

important topics to explore.

3 WHO Media Workshop Report, p.6
4 WHO Media Workshop Report, p.6
5 WHO Media Workshop Report, p.8
6 WHO Media Workshop Report, p.7
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 In 2000, the United Nations released the Millennium

Development Goals (MDGs), which identified eight global issues that

needed to be addressed. The idea behind the MDGs was cooperation

and partnership between developed and developing countries to

provide resources and relief in order to eradicate some of the biggest

problems in the world. The MDGs include the eradication of extreme

poverty and hunger, the achievement of universal primary education,

the promotion of gender equality for women, the reduction of child

mortality, the improvement of maternal health, the fight against AIDS

and HIV, the insurance of environmental sustainability, and a global

partnership for development.7 The fifth one, the improvement of

maternal health deals directly with addressing maternal mortality.

The issue of maternal mortality cannot be discussed without taking a

look at the statistics. While the statistics cannot be considered 100%

accurate, they still give an idea of what the difference is between

giving birth in a developed country, and giving birth in an

underdeveloped country. The statistics are based on maternal deaths

per 100,000 live births. In 2005, Sub-Saharan Africa had 900 maternal

deaths, and Southern Asia had 490. These are the regions with the two

highest maternal mortality rates. In stark contrast, in developed

regions, the number of deaths in 2005 was 9.8

Most of maternal deaths are related to preventable conditions

such as post-partum hemorrhaging, infections, eclampsia and

7 UN Millennium Development Goals report

8 UN Millennium Development Goals report, p.26
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obstructed labor.9 The reason these conditions take such a toll on

women is because in underdeveloped countries, pregnant women do

not have access to the healthcare that we take for granted in

developed countries. While a woman in the United States has continual

visits with an OBGYN during her pregnancy, birth, and even after birth,

some women in developing countries never even see a health

professional until they are going into labor and are rushed to the

nearest healthcare facility. They are then often confronted with issues

like lack of resources and trained professionals.

Recently, the issue of birth and maternal mortality has gotten

media attention due to well-known people taking an interest in the

cause. The August 2009 issue of Vogue features Christy Turlington on

the cover with an article that explores her life since her days as a

fashion model. Ms. Turlington, probably one of the most recognizable

faces in the world, was one of the most sought after supermodels in

the 1990s. At the age of 25 she decided to retire from modeling to get

an education and pursue other interests.10 Ms. Turlington became

interested in the issue of maternal health and mortality after the birth

of her first child, five years ago. The birth was a natural birth, with a

slight complication that posed no danger to Ms. Turlington’s life or that

of her baby, but a complication that she later learned would often be

fatal to women in developing countries.11 Ms. Turlington decided to get

involved and her interest in the issue peaked after she took a trip to El

9 UN Millennium Development Goals report, p.27

10 Vogue article, p.128
11 Vogue article, p.128
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Salvador, her mother’s birth country, while pregnant with her second

child in 2005.12 After this trip, and another one in 2007 to Peru, Ms.

Turlington says, “I decided to begin making a documentary film to

highlight some of the most promising projects and leaders in the field,

inspiring more advocacy and action.”13

In her film, entitled “No Woman, No Cry” Ms. Turlington travels

to Guatemala, Bangladesh, and Tanzania, documenting the lives of

pregnant women and mothers there, as well as documenting the lives

of mothers giving birth in the United States. She says, “Maternal

deaths mean there are very serious things going on under the radar

about women’s status. There is aid for children, but without mothers,

what are their chances of survival?”14 Ms. Turlington’s documentary is

slated for release next year to coincide with the tenth anniversary of

the Millennium Development Goals. Besides the article in Vogue, Ms.

Turlington has gotten a lot of press for her work on the documentary.

She writes a column for Marie Claire magazine in which she describes

her efforts in furthering activism around maternal mortality, both here

in the United States and abroad. Her ability to publish her efforts

shows how media can be, and is being used, to bring awareness to

these important issues.

While Ms. Turlington might be the most recognizable person

connected to the issue of maternal mortality at the moment, that

doesn’t mean that other efforts aren’t being made. Nicholas Kristof, a

12 Christy Turlington Burns website

13 Christy Turlington Burns website
14 Vogue article, p.130
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writer for The New York Times, publishes a twice-weekly op-ed column

in which he discusses a variety of issues, including maternal mortality.

Maternal mortality was also a topic in his Pulitzer Prize winning book

Half The Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women

Worldwide, co-written with his wife, which came out in September. The

New Security Beat is a blog that reports on such issues as

environmental conditions and population growth. Under the heading on

the blog it reads, “Population growth. Water scarcity. Degraded

ecosystems. The resource curse. Pandemic disease. Forced migration.

Often linked to civil conflict and war, these problems are today’s new

security threats.”15 In September, The New Security Beat published a

post about maternal health, citing the efforts of Christy Turlington as

well as Ethiopian supermodel Liya Kebede and initiatives like the Safe

Motherhood Initiative and the White Ribbon Alliance.16 The post also

talks about celebrity endorsement of Mr. Kristof’s book mentioned

above, which has played an important role in bringing awareness to

the plight of women in the developing world.

The media alone cannot solve maternal mortality, because in

order to really solve it political will and money is needed to provide

adequate healthcare, supplies, and healthcare professionals to

pregnant women. However, this doesn’t mean that the media cannot

play an important role in raising awareness. The issue with maternal

mortality is that women like us in a developed country never have to

15 The New Security Beat Blog

16 The New Security Beat Blog post, “Is the White Ribbon the New
Black? Making Maternal Health Fashionable”
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face birthing issues so these issues never even cross our minds.

Because of the sophistication of our healthcare system, giving birth is

probably the most standard of procedures today, and therefore we

forget that a majority of the world is not as fortunate as us. But when

we become reminded of this, we are also reminded that because we

have access to this kind of care means that there is the ability for it to

be available to everyone. The simplest of resources are needed to

provide adequate care for women giving birth, we are not dealing with

a pandemic disease or a natural disaster here, and hopefully the media

exposure will continue to spread the word that this is an issue that can,

and should, be solved.