About 54% of all maternal deaths in Africa are due to unsafe abortion because of restrictive legislation and lack of access to modern family planning methods.
This was contained in a presentation titled, Abortion: An essential component of women's health, by Philip Danny a consultant Obstetrician and Gynecologist from the United States of America.
He said countries should reject leaders who do not treat the lives of mothers humanely saying that mothers should not be coerced into motherhood.
He was presenting a second paper at the First International Congress on Women's health and Unsafe Abortion at the Imperial Queen's park Hotel, Bangkok, Thailand on Thursday.
The conference is organized by Women's Health and reproductive Rights Foundation of Thailand in cooperation with The Royal Thai College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Department of health.
The conference, which has participants from 58 countries in six continents around the world including researchers and health scientists and journalists, is organized with the following objectives:
First: to provide a scientific platform to highlight the universal problem of unsafe abortion and women's health rights.
Second: to highlight that abortion is a public health reproductive issue.
Third: to highlight the advances in and current safe abortion technology being used in the developed world and how such technology can easily be transferred to the developing world.
Fourthly: most importantly to provide a platform for global networking.
In his opening remarks earlier, Prof. Kamheang Chaturachinda, the President of Women’s health and Reproductive Rights Foundation of Thailand said that women in the developing world, of which Uganda is one, are dying from unsafe abortion even though there are great advances in medical technology.
He added that they are dying from their inability to access reproductive health care, and quoted Allan Rosenfield who fought for the reproductive rights of Thai women thus: ' --Women are not dying from the diseases that we cannot treat but they are dying because societies have yet to make the decision that their lives are worth saving'. We have a means to stop this needles loss of life, he stressed.
In Uganda, the maternal mortality rate is at 435 deaths per 100,000 live births which is an indicator of the bad situation prevailing in the health sector.
More that 200 million couples in the developing world need family planning methods but they can’t access them.
The United Nations estimates that by 2050, as more young people enter their prime reproductive ages, the demand for contraceptives will grow by 40%.
Source: Sunday Vision, Bangkok, 21 January 2010
Author: Deusdedit Ruhangariyo