Prevalence of Maternal Mortality in South India

As of hints from WHO, India is a global giant in maternal mortality, that is 10 lakhs death every year. Government of India has undertaken various initiatives to reduce the rate in past years. This study was conducted in 8 hospitals in a district of south India, (6 from urban area and 2 from rural). Patients details like demographic, education, economical & marital status, maternal mortality rate(MMR) and the reason from 2003 to 2008 were collected.MMR has declined 25% from 16/4020 births in 2003 to 7/7140 in 2008.The maternal death during this period were due to hemorrhage(38%), puerperal infection(16%), eclampsia(20%), obstructed labor(12%), Complication of abortion(10%) and others (4%). The reason behind the decline in MMR were increase in use of EmOC (71%) (the basic EmOC includes treatment for sepsis, treatment for eclampsia, treatment for prolonged or obstructed labor, treatment for incomplete miscarriage & removal of placenta and comprehensive EmOC includes Surgery, anesthesia & safe blood transfusion), increase in institutional deliveries (97.0%), Increased Antenatal care and Increased access to safe abortion services. Another risk factor is maternal age, birth to women over 35, has drastically decreased by 7%, the average age of women at the time of child birth is 22.5. Due to increase in educational and economic status of the women, the maternal mortality is decreased further. While comparing the MMR in urban and rural area, the rate was higher in rural area (58%) due to lack of access to high quality skilled care and EmOC, poor nutritional status, high levels of anemia and improper referral in the case of emergency. Thus we conclude that the maternal mortality was fallen down in both urban and rural areas from past year, but still we need to increase the facility in rural area to decrease the rate further.