Safe Motherhood Day 2023: Common Causes of Maternal Mortality in India

The burden of maternal mortality Maternal mortality is the death of a woman during pregnancy or during or after delivery or within six weeks of giving birth. As per WHO, a maternal death occurred every two minutes in 2020. Around 95 per of all maternal deaths occurred in lower and lower-middle-income countries. Women mostly die due to the complications that might arise during pregnancy, following pregnancy and childbirth. It also highlights the inequalities in the healthcare systems that might make healthcare facilities difficult to access for some. The following are some reasons behind maternal mortality in the country.Social factors There are social causes that might lead to maternal mortality. It could be early marriage and early pregnancy resulting in complications, repeated childbirth, preference for sons, malnutrition and a mother suffering from anaemia, absence of sound medical advice and vigilance, lack of information about danger signs and symptoms and other social reasons.Physical factors Among the medical causes could be obstructed labour, haemorrhage, and excessive bleeding leading to blood loss and death. Other causes could be infection or sepsis, high blood pressure during pregnancy and childbirth, unsafe abortion and others.Healthcare factors There could also exist some loopholes in the availability and accessibility of healthcare services like lack of trained healthcare personnel at the medical centres, lack of complication readiness both in terms of skills and equipment, medical negligence, lack of money, absence of medical supervision especially in complicated pregnancies, limited or no antenatal visits during pregnancy and others.COVID-19 and pregnancy As per WHO, COVID-19 have contributed to the lack of progress in the collection of maternal mortality data. According to the global health watchdog, COVID-19 might have been impacted by two factors, deaths where women might have died due to interaction between COVID-19 and pregnancy, or deaths where pregnancy complications couldn’t be addressed due to disruption of healthcare services.