FROM THE FIELD
Hundreds of pregnant women in Zimbabwe face death because of a near-total collapse of obstetric health services, Save the Children warned today. Speaking from Harare, Save the Children's Zimbabwe Country Director, Rachel Pounds,said: "Zimbabwe is in the grip of a life threatening health crisis. A hungry nation is being wracked by a huge cholera outbreak. At the same time state hospitals are without sufficient drugs and staff and in many cases are actually closed""However, there is another, unpublicised health crisis afflicting hundreds - if not thousands - of pregnant Zimbabwean woman." Most of the main state hospitals in Harare were now unable to provide emergency obstetric services, such as caesarean sections."It has been reported by the UN that 700 women were recently told to return to their referring clinics as they could not access maternity services in the Harare hospitals. While firm information is impossible to come by in Zimbabwe at the moment, I believe this is likely to be the case across the country and that most state health services are in a state of collapse." "This means that any woman requiring a caesarean or some other form of emergency obstetric assistance at a state hospital will not be able to access care and both she and her child stand a very high risk of death. ""Like many of the more than five million Zimbabweans who need food aid today, many pregnant woman will be undernourished and unwell, increasing the risks of their babies being born underweight which reduces the baby's chance of survival following birth. Many women will also require caesareans due to complications in labour."If they don't get them the babies will die from foetal distress and the mothers will die from haemorrhage." Another likely cause of death would be in cases where the afterbirth did not come away after birth. "It is a simple procedure to sort this out. But without medical attention the mother will die leaving an orphan behind. This is an obvious tragedy in any circumstances, but Zimbabwe today is no place for a baby to be without a mother."Our staff in Zimbabwe are feeding hundreds of thousands of people and providing basic health care, including medical assistance to pregnant women. But, Ms Pounds warned, the international children's charity was struggling to find sufficient equipment to help mothers-to-be needing emergency attention.
Crisis in Zimbabwe donation form
and post it or fax it to us[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]
[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]
