In a country like India which sees more than 60,000 deaths of women in childbirth in a year and an infant mortality rate of 47 per 1,000 live births, the news that women’s groups can dramatically reduce the number of maternal and newborn deaths is a hopeful sign. An analysis published in the reputed medical journal, The Lancet, says that women’s groups who attend a short training course, but are not health workers, can help to bring down the maternal and infant mortality rates. The study is based on trials carried out in Bangladesh, India, Malawi and Nepal and looked at 119,428 births.
The women’s groups used discussions, voting and role-playing to identity common pregnancy-related problems and work out locally appropriate ways to deal with them. As a result of their efforts, maternal deaths fell by 37 per cent and infant deaths by 23. The improvement has been ascribed to the fact that mothers and babies belonging to poor communities die as much due to social as medical causes, as the lead author of the report, Dr Audrey Prost, has said. The reason is that a woman may not seek help for a health problem in pregnancy if she lacks authority in the household or transport or money.
But life-saving preventive steps can be taken at home if the young mothers know how to do so and have the requisite self-assurance to take the necessary steps with the family’s support. What they need is information, self-confidence and assistance from the family and the community. The most delicate periods of pregnancy are the first three and the last three months. However, since most women in conservative societies spend the first period in the houses of their in-laws, they may not always receive the kind of sympathy which they can in their parental homes. This is where women’s groups with their basic medical know-how can be of considerable help.