“In Rwanda, a combination of community-based health insurance, community health workers, and good external partnerships led to the steepest reductions in maternal mortality ever recorded.” — President Kagame of Rwanda at the WHO General Assembly in Geneva, 2018

Despite several discussions around “maternal mortality”, how much do people really understand about this term? Why would the president of a country allude to this as one of his greatest achievements? The official definition by the World Health Organisation describes maternal mortality as “the death of a woman while pregnant or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy, irrespective of the duration and site of the pregnancy, from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy or its management but not from accidental or incidental causes”. But it really means a lot more- at a family, community and national level it demonstrates how a community takes care of its mothers and drives economic growth.

Every day, 830 women die from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth around the world. A more familiar scenario to describe this would be if a Boeing 747 aircraft crashed and all the passengers died, every single day. A majority of these maternal deaths have been attributed to severe bleeding, infection, hypertension during pregnancy and unsafe abortions. Adolescent pregnancy also remains a major contributor to maternal and child mortality. Many adolescent mothers face higher risks of developing obstetric fistula. This is a potentially serious medical condition where a hole develops between the vagina and rectum or the urinary bladder, making it impossible to control urine.