GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The massive flooding that has affected large areas of Pakistan for months is straining humanitarian agencies budgets, stretched thin by falling donor contributions as economies weaken. Care International Thursday issued a plea for more funding despite the economic situation, for a particularly vulnerable group, pregnant women.
The Geneva group notes that “of the more than five million people currently affected by the floods in Sindh, approximately 143,750 of them are pregnant women. Of these, 15 percent—or 21,562 women—will need medical treatment for obstetric complications.” The aid group says that women and children need a range of services, from family planning to the prevention and treatment of sexual violence, clean delivery services, and emergency obstetric and newborn care.
Care notes that to date only 22 percent of the promised funding for the emergency in Pakistan has come through, and the situation is desperate:
”Privacy’ is a serious health issue for women, particularly pregnant and lactating women. ‘They are trapped, exposed on the roadside, and there are no private latrines, [Dr Malik Umair, Senior Health Advisor] Umair says.
But 1,000 women die a day: numbers must fall further, say UN agencies
Maternal health care, Sierre Leone (photo: UN / H Bigur)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Maternal deaths are falling worldwide, down by 34 percent since 1990, shows a new multi- agency report published 15 September. Some 358,000 women died during or from complications related to childbirth in 2008, down from 546,000 18 years earlier.
The fall is commendable, notes the World Health Organization (WHO), which is one of the author agencies, but the rate of decline is less than half of that needed to meet the Millennium Development Goal of a 75 percent reduction in maternal deaths between 1990 and 2015.
The report was published jointly by WHO, the UN Children’s Fund (Unicef), the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and the World Bank.
Pregnant women still die from four major causes, according to the report: severe bleeding after childbirth, infections, hypertensive disorders, and unsafe abortions. About 1,000 women died due to these complications every day in 2008. Of these, 570 lived in sub-Saharan Africa, 300 in South Asia and five in high-income countries.
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Switzerland’s second death from A/H1N1 flu has taken place just a week after the first, but doctors point out that the patient, a woman over 50 with diabetes, could well have died if she contracted regular flu. TSR quotes the head of public health in Zurich as saying that in a normal year Zurich alone has some 100 flu-related deaths, generally caused by complications from existing health problems.
Bern, Switzerland and Vaud, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Swiss federal health authorities late Thursday issued an alert about the measles outbreak in Vaud this week, reminding people that the virus causes serious illness and vaccinations are the only protection against the potentially deadly disease. Fifty new cases have been declared in Switzerland since the start of 2009, half of them this week alone, in Vaud – the number of cases seen in a total year when there is not an epidemic. [Ed. note: see "Measles outbreak unprecedented," GL, 5 February]. Four new schools were affected Thursday when brothers and sisters of the 17 students with measles from the Rudolf Steiner school in Crissier also fell ill.
