Mother's Index - Maternal Mortality and Women's Status

In a recent Citizens for Midwifery www.cfmidwifery.org

e-news, Susan Hodges wrote:

About 99% of births in the US take place in hospitals.

If standard obstetric practice is so good, why does the US rank so abysmally when it comes to maternal mortality and neonatal mortality?

The Complete Mothers’ Index 2007 shows that

mothers in the US have a higher lifetime risk of maternal

mortality than the mothers in 27 other developed countries

http://www.savethechildren.org/campaigns/state-of-the-worlds-moth/ers-report/2007/mothers-index.html

http://www.savethechildren.org/publications/mothers/2007/Mothers-Index-2007.pdf

The World Health Organization states:

For every woman who dies, many more suffer from serious conditions that can affect them for the rest of their lives. Maternal mortality is an indicator of disparity and inequity between men and women and its extent a sign of women's place in society and their access to social, health, and nutrition services and to economic opportunities.

I hope you will think about the above statement and consider how women's status in your country and your country ranks in maternal mortality are connected.

Women's rights are human rights.