The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has revealed that about 800 women die during childbirth in Nigeria.
According to The PUNCH, the foundation also stated that the world has not met the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to the desired extent at the halfway mark.
They revealed this information in its recently published seventh annual Goalkeepers Report.
The report emphasised the role of innovation and investment in driving progress, specifically in addressing the worldwide issue of maternal and child mortality.
This work was co-authored by a foundation. The report, co-chaired by Melinda Gates and Bill Gates, presents new data on the potential impact of expanding global access to seven innovations and practises that target the primary causes of maternal and newborn mortality.
“By making new innovations accessible to those who need them most, two million additional lives could be saved by 2030, and 6.4 million lives by 2040. That’s two million families spared an unimaginable heartbreak—and two million more people who can shape and enrich our world,” they said.
Global efforts to reduce maternal mortality have stopped since 2016, and death rates have been progressively increasing in certain nations, including the United States.
Every day, almost 800 women worldwide pass away giving delivery. The first month of a newborn’s life continues to be the most deadly, accounting for about half of all under-five deaths today, even though the number of deaths of children under five has been declining since the middle of the 2010s. According to estimates, 74% of infant deaths occur in the first year of life.
French Gates and Gates appreciate the worldwide efforts that greatly improved maternal and infant health between 2000 and 2015, they note that progress has slowed since the COVID-19 epidemic.
They discussed how, over the past decade, groundbreaking research into maternal and child health has resulted to simple, inexpensive, and widely adopted inventions and practises that prevent and manage potentially fatal problems during childbirth.
They do, however, urge swift action to get the world back on track to meet the 2030 target of reducing maternal mortality to 70 per 100,000 live births and infant mortality to 12 per 1,000 live births.
“As is so often the case in global health, innovations aren’t making their way to the people who need them most—women in low-income countries, as well as Black and Indigenous women in high-income countries like the United States, who are dying at three times the rate of white women. That needs to change,” French Gates said. “We have seen over and over again that when countries actually prioritise and invest in women’s health, they unleash a powerful engine for progress that can reduce poverty, advance gender equality, and build resilient economies.
“Over the past decade, the field of child health has advanced faster and farther than I thought I’d see in my lifetime,” said Bill Gates. “If our delivery can keep pace with our learning—if researchers can continue developing new innovations and skilled health workers can get them to every mother and child who needs them—then more babies will survive those crucial first days.”
They argue that midwives and other community-based birth workers can provide many of the life-saving technologies and practises mentioned in the report.
The innovations include, “A bundle of interventions that can reduce postpartum hemorrhage, the number one cause of maternal death, by 60 per cent for less than $1 per package is Bifidobacteria (B. Infantis), a new probiotic supplement that, when given to an infant alongside breastmilk, combats malnutrition—one of the leading causes of newborn deaths.
“Multiple micronutrient supplements that boost survival rates for babies by helping replete nutrient stores in pregnant women and ensuring those vital nutrients are transferred to the baby.
“A new one-time infusion of IV iron for women that replenishes iron reserves during pregnancy, protecting against and treating anaemia, a condition that is both a cause and effect of postpartum hemorrhage and affects almost 37 per cent of pregnant women. Antenatal corticosteroids, which are given to women who will give birth prematurely to accelerate fetal lung growth, providing several weeks of maturation in just a few days. Azithromycin, which reduces maternal infections during pregnancy and prevents infections from spiraling into sepsis—the cause of 23 per cent of maternal deaths in the United States—and reduces mortality when given to infants in high-mortality settings.
“An AI-enabled portable ultrasound that empowers nurses and midwives to monitor high-risk pregnancies in low-resource settings to ensure that risks are diagnosed and addressed early.”
