Tuesday, July 10, 2007

'What Kills One Woman Every Minute of the Day?'

Don't mean to start off the day with too much of a downer of a post, but I'd been meaning to share this for a while...
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Kudos to Newsweek for some hard-hitting journalism on women's health (something that the mainstream media doesn't touch too often, unless they're politicizing the abortion debate). Newsweek ran an article in their last issue with the title "What Kills One Woman Every Minute of the Day?" Your choices:

A. Heart Attack
B. AIDS
C. Childbirth
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The answer? Childbirth, aka "the leading killer of women" (Newsweek's words, not mine). To many of us living in industrialized countries, this might come as a surprise. While just 1 in 30,000 women die in childbirth in Sweden, 1 in 7 Afghan women die in childbirth. On average, a whopping 1 in 16 women die in the developing world while giving birth. Yet rates of maternal mortality (how many women per 100,000 die giving birth) are one of the best measures of the overall health of a society. What does that say, then, about global health issues?
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The saddest part is that it's often so simple to prevent maternal death in childbirth--antibiotics and medications can make a huge difference.

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