Tackling the problem of maternal mortality today: A look at modern and advanced technology based ways to tackle this issue
Today the number of people who have expressed an interest in the Millennium Development Goals is overwhelming. The MDGs are development goals identified and fronted by the United Nations[1] in September 2000(the beginning of a new millennium) that are intended to reduce extreme poverty and setting out a series of time-bound targets, with a deadline of 2015 which will probably will never be achieved because the year seems so near and there is still a lot to desire. I, like many people had not come to terms with this until last year in my First year at the Makerere University School of Law when for the Development Studies Coursework we were given the tiresome and partially traumatizing yet revealing task of visiting a slum of our choice, observe and later on write in relation to the possibility of achieving these goals. The situation was way worse than I had ever fathomed. In addition to poor infrastructure, our trip to Katanga was constantly punctuated with tales of frustrated young unemployed Ugandans who have so many bones to pick with the government. As many have turned to a life of crime, many people ignore the fact that this problem is way more far reaching that many care to admit. The problem is just everywhere in our third world existence and can be found in every circle within our banana republic. The main reason why these problems have persisted since time immemorial is not as far as we think. It’s mainly because of our approaches in tackling it. We handle and tackle these problems from the wrong angle. Just like our national curriculum which was shaped to serve the interests of the colonial time Uganda, trying to solve the current unemployment among the youth without dealing with the curriculum is like doing the proverbial pouring water through a basket.
I have a personal relation with Millennium Development
Goal Number 5 (which focuses on improving maternal health) because a friend of
mine lost his mother to it. The goal has targets which are; target 5A which
aims to reduce by three quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality
ratio and the proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel. Also,
target 5B which looks at plans to achieve, by 2015, universal access to
reproductive health, contraceptive prevalence rate, controlling adolescent
birth rate, increasing antenatal care coverage and the unmet need for family
planning[2]. Here, maternal mortality
is one of the prevalent problems in the country that have persisted to haunt
the nation majorly due to the lack of information on how to minimize it by the
victims. The major causes that account for 75% of maternal mortality include
hemorrhage, infection, and high blood pressure during pregnancy, complications
from delivery, unsafe abortions, and obstructed labor[3]. Every day, approximately
800 women die from preventable causes related to child pregnancy and child
birth, this figure is unacceptably high and any means to help reduce this
phenomenon should be highly valued. According
to[4] almost 300,000 women died
worldwide in 2013 childbirths. 99% of all maternal deaths occur in developing countries[5], due to reasons I figure
can be combated for instance lack of information, inadequate services, cultural
practices, poverty, domestic violence, etc. According to Jessica Berman (Voice
of America), December 12th 2014 2:28 pm, almost 300,000 women died worldwide in
2013 childbirths primarily in developing countries from complications related
to pregnancy and childbirth according to a report that blames the deaths on
lack of safe water, sanitation and adequate hygiene. A paper published in the
PLOS Medicine reports that some 38 % of healthcare facilities in 54 developing
countries continue to lack proper sanitation and a source of clean water. The
article written by a team of researchers from organizations including Water Aid,
WHO, the London school of hygiene and tropical medicine, UNICEF and the United
Nations Population Fund estimates that 289000 would-be mothers died from
unsanitary conditions either at home or in health care facilities. Despite 15
years of concerted global efforts to reduce maternal mortality, the report
notes it remains 14 times higher in poor countries than in developed countries . More than 70% of maternal deaths are due to
five major complications: hemorrhage (25%), infection (15%), complications of
unsafe abortion (13%), hypertension (12%) and obstructed labor (8%). These
complications can occur at any time during pregnancy and childbirth, often
without forewarning and often requiring immediate access to emergency obstetric
care for their management (Safe Motherhood Technical Consultation Report, 1997)
A
multi-care approach is the most effective way for pregnant women with HIV
infection to have a healthy pregnancy and delivery. This approach will address
the medical, psychological, social and practical challenges of pregnancy with
HIV. Such information is not readily available for the reproductive mothers.
Reproductive mothers’
lack of information on how to curb this problem is in my opinion one of the
leading reasons as to why it is so widespread. It is regrettable that in this
era when we should be entitled to a sufficiently developed health care system
with fully functional health care and access to emergency lifesaving treatment and
drugs and affordable medicare, thousands of women still die in a natural and
unavoidable common process of giving life. Everyone should be able to walk into
a hospital and give birth but most importantly have access to the information
that they need to reach delivery stage.
This problem has majorly been tackled with archaic
mechanisms and systems that have outlived their usefulness and can no longer
apply in today’s day to day life. While the strategies we have crammed to
employ sound attractive and rosy, they seem to have faded away in
effectiveness. Don’t get me wrong I think sensitizing the masses physically and
incorporating the message in plays and visiting the villages to encourage
antenatal visits has its many upsides for nothing is as powerful as having the
right information, but this era has provided new avenues for us to spread the
word. The right to information is one of the most important and dangerous
platforms in the world because with information and knowledge can be achieved. Today,
technology has developed and social media companies like Facebook make millions
in what has become one of the biggest economies today. The solution to maternal
mortality could have been found in the most unexpected platforms. This solution
can be summarized in two words that is,
‘information technology’. Information
Technology refers to technology[6] involving the development,
maintenance, and use of computer systems, software, and networks for the
processing and distribution of data. It can also be defined as the study or use
of systems (especially computers and telecommunications) for storing,
retrieving, and sending information.
Information technology has a number of ways and
platforms on which this information can be carried for example websites that
inform the reproductive mothers about these issues and how to tackle them in a
manner similar to the americanpregnancy.org[7] ran by the American
Pregnancy Association and ensuring that Public Health organizations and
associations like the Public Health Ambassadors in Uganda and say the Reach a
Hand Foundation run blogs or dedicate more space on their websites to such
information. Reminding reproductive mothers when it is time to go for their
next antenatal and postnatal checkups, availing information on the necessary
nutrition required that is helpful in this pregnancy season and other relevant
facts for this.
Social media has also become a significant part of
today’s life with the most common social networks being Facebook and Twitter
and others like Instagram and Whats App closely following behind here in
Uganda. Social media are websites and applications that enable users to create
and share content or to participate in social networking. Its defined by
Merriam Webster as forms of electronic communication (as Web sites for social
networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to
share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (as videos).
Used majorly for gossip and known to be a common distraction from productive
work, social media is s
Many problems of the world have been and are
being solved by mobile applications developed by specialists in information
technology sector for example last year some Makerere University students
founded and formed Matibabu, a mobile
application that is used for the purpose of prick-less testing for Malaria in a
time when Malaria is recognized as one of the leading killers of children and
pregnant women in Africa today and has been for more than the last thirty
years. It is a standing example of an instance when an application has been
used to solve a standing social problem. Some serious IT entrepreneurs should
take on this issue and produce an online mobile application with information
about maternal mortality. The application should be accessible and available
for free download and should provide help basing on people’s different health
history database, age, location (for help in telling which health centers are
nearest to her), HIV status, how far due the pregnancy is and so this
information should be collected first. The application shall be
expected to be reliable, affordable and efficient and above all secure and run
on all platforms i.e. android, Symbian, IOS, windows operating systems. It
shall be expected to send remainders to its subscribers each and every day with
the right recommendations and tips per pregnancy period.
Also more importantly, it is impertinent to note that
most of the reproducing mothers who have access to mobile applications .i.e.
those that readily access and can afford to use smart phone applications are
usually those that have access to the information that they need. This is
because smart phones being expensive, it may be safe to assume the application
may not reach the real target group that needs it, that is, the remotely
located poor women with no access to it as applications come with other subtle
costs like data charges as internet is not free. An easy to use option is
necessary and desirable. The best way to achieve this would be through the USSD
platform used by mobile telephone subscribers to buy bundles and packages for
example the *100# used on Warid Telecom Uganda to give a clearer picture. Fully
referred to as Unstructured Supplementary Service Data in tech language, it is
also referred to as ‘quick codes’ or ‘feature codes’. It’s used on GSM Networks
to communicate with the telecom service providers’ computers. It’s widely used can
be used for WAP browsing, prepaid callback service, mobile-money services,
location-based content services, menu-based information services, and as part
of configuring the phone on the networks. This would have solved the accessibility
issue as all phones are enabled to do this even the most basic of phones (read
GSM).
Hotlines and voice response technology are also a way
to combat this issue. These should have the effect of linking pregnant women
with health clinics through interactive voice response technology. This saves
time and it’s a universal rule that in issues related to pregnancy, child birth
and maternal health time could make all the diference. Also, this unlike the
other platforms, does not require patient literacy and so the illiterate
pregnant women can easily access and use them which will serve to remove the
issue of literacy.
All in all, the old approach the world is using to
combat maternal mortality today is outdated and has outlived its usefulness. The
world today is gifted with technology which we can channel into a positive
energy that can be used to change the statistics indicated above. Let’s embrace
information technology and other modern approaches and save the pregnant
mothers out in the remote world who die every day merely because they just happen
to lack the access to information.
References
1.Wikipedia
2. WHO Maternal Health
4. Voice of America 2014
5. World Health Organization and UNICEF (2010).
"Countdown to 2015 decade report (2000–2010): taking stock of maternal,
newborn and child survival" (PDF). Geneva: WHO and UNICEF
6. “The Safe
Motherhood Action Agenda: Priorities for the Next Decade” by Safe Motherhood
Technical Consultation Report, 1997, New York: Family Care International in
collaboration with Safe Motherhood Inter-Agency Group (SMIAG).
7. "HIV/AIDS During Pregnancy". American
Pregnancy Association. Retrieved 17 October 2013.
8. http://www.givewell.org/international/technical/programs/maternal-mortality
9. Izugbara, Chimaraoke; Ngilangwa, David (2010).
"Women, poverty and adverse maternal outcomes in Nairobi, Kenya".
BMC Women's Health 10 (33). doi:10.1186/1472-6874-10-33. Retrieved 6 November
2013
10. Filippi,
Veronique; et al. (28 October 2006). "Maternal health in poor countries:
the broader context and a call for action". The Lancet 368: 1535–1541.
doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(06)69384-7
11. Toure, K. & others. (2012, in press). Positioning
women's and children's health in African union policy-making: A policy
analysis. Global Health. cited in Santrock, John W. (14th ed.). Life-Span
Development. McGraw Hill, 2013.
Comments
Post a Comment