Maternal Health Lesotho

1. Improve Maternal Health
Lesotho
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2. Goal
Reduce maternal mortality ratio by three quarts
between 1990 and 2015
*Maternal Health is the health of a woman during pregnancy
and childbirth
*Maternal Mortality is the death of a woman while
pregnant or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy
* Maternal mortality is only down by 45% globally
*Complications in pregnancy and child birth are the leading
causes of death and disability in women of reproductive age
in developing countries.
*Most of the immediate and direct causes are
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3. Relevance
Lesotho suffers one of the highest maternal mortality rates in
the world
• Mortality rates in very rural and isolated areas are particularly high. There is an
inequality.
• There is long distances and lack of transportation to the nearest health centre
for pregnant women living in rural areas, resulting in them walking for hours
even during labour.
• The mountainous terrain and user fees keep many women from accessing
antenatal care, lifesaving HIV treatments as well as accessing the services for
the prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV.
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4. Maternal mortality ratio (per 100,000 live births)
COUNTRY 1993 2003 2013
Lesotho
(2.074 million)
666 674 490
Namibia
(2.303 million)
296 258 130
0
175
350
525
700
875
1993 2003 2013
Lesotho in comparison to Namibia
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5. Implications
Maternal health supports the strategy to improve the
health system as whole
• Maternal Health is linked to some of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG):
1. MDG 3 Promote Gender equality; which targets female empowerment.
2. MDG 4 Reduce Child Mortality;
Strengthens efforts to promote newborn survival (newborns are 10x more likely to
survive if their mother survives child birth).
Improving the health of the child, because healthy children need healthy mothers.
3. MDG 6 Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases;
At least 20% of disease in children below the age of 5 is related to poor maternal
health and nutrition.
HIV transmission from mother to child is the second most common mode of
transmission.
• Improves the welfare of the whole family
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6. Challenges &
Solutions
Challenges
• Some of the problems can not be predicted and others cannot be prevented (difficult
to prepare for as in the case of immunisation)
• Most life-saving interventions require considerable skill
• Inaccessibility of health facilities (the fees and the distance keep many women from
accessing)
• Lack of skilled health professionals
Solutions
Use the MDG Acceleration Framework for Maternal Health to identify and prioritise the
following;
• The need to attract and increase the supply of skilled health professionals in deprived
areas.
• The need to train more birth attendants
• The need for accessible universal health facilities to all pregnant women
• The need to educate women and girls in deprived areas ( educated women and girls
are empowered to make decisions ( i.e regarding sending their children to school,
marriage, family planning and health ).
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7. References
Google (2015) Public Data: Population, February 2015 available at
http://www.google.co.uk/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sp_pop_totl&idim=country:NAM:BWA:LSO&hl=en&
dl=en last accessed 01.03.2015
Medicines Sans Frontiers (2013) Lesotho: Maternal mortality in the mountain kingdom, June 2013 available at
http://www.msf.org/article243/lesotho-maternal-mortality-mountain-kingdom last accessed 01.03.2015
TAC Economics (2013) MDG Track: Monitoring Progress Towards The Millennium Development Goals available at
http://www.mdgtrack.org/index.php?tab=i&i=SH.STA.MMRT last accessed 01.03.2015
The World Bank (2015) Millennium Development Goals: Improve maternal health by 2015, 2015 available at
http://www.worldbank.org/mdgs/maternal_health.html last accessed 01.03.2015
Unesco (2014) Kingdom of Lesotho: Millennium Development Goals Status Report 2013, April 2014 available at
http://planipolis.iiep.unesco.org/upload/Lesotho/Lesotho%20MDG%20Report%202013.pdf last accessed 01.03.2015
Unicef (2012) Lesotho: In Lesotho, reaching all pregnant women with health services to eliminate paediatric HIV infection,
May 2012 available at http://www.unicef.org/health/lesotho_62531.html last accessed 01.03.2015
Unicef (2015) Millennium development goals. available at http://www.unicef.org/mdg/maternal.html last accessed 27.02.
2015
UNDP (2013) Millennium Development Goals: Improve maternal health, 2013 available at
http://www.undp.org/content/lesotho/en/home/mdgoverview/overview/mdg5.html last accessed 01.03.2015
UNPD (2014) Kingdom of Lesotho: Millennium Development Goals Status Report 2013, July 2014 available at
http://www.ls.undp.org/content/dam/lesotho/docs/Reports/MDG%20Report%20-%202013.pdf last accessed 01.03.2015
UNPD (2014) The Millennium Development Goals Status Report 2014, 2014 available
athttp://www.undp.org/content/dam/undp/library/MDG/english/UNDP_MDGReport_EN_2014Final1.pdf last accessed
01.03.2015
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