IMAGINE being left alone to die during a difficult birth because
your family considers prolonged labour to be evidence of marital
infidelity. Or bleeding to death once your baby is born because
the placenta stays firmly in place, delivering blood to a fetus
that is no longer there. Unfortunately, avoidable deaths such as
these are all too common, according to figures on maternal
mortality released by the WHO last week. In its report, the
organisation revised the estimated number of deaths each year
related to pregnancy upwards by 80 000. That grim figure means
that some 585 000 women now die annually, 99 per cent of them in
developing countries (see This Week). Not surprisingly, the
WHO's investigators found that women fare worst in the poorest
countries. In regions of eastern and western Africa, for
example, they found that previous surveys had underestimated by
a third the number of fatalities. ... To continue reading this
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