Today I read Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem’s piece, “Mothers Should Not Die Giving Life,” in Women’s eNews. In this piece, he puts a face on the stats — his sister, Asmau. 

Asmau was far from illiterate. She was a senior science teacher in a secondary school and her husband is a college principal. In income terms, both of them are not the so-called “ordinary” man and woman. Their income could “buy” them better access to health facilities. My sister died in a “private” clinic in Funtua, a small town in Nigeria. The clinic is one of many that have mushroomed in response to the crisis in the public health sector in Africa.

In my sister’s case the main reason she bled to death was because the private clinic did not have competent professionals to attend to her post-natal emergency. For many other women, death could result from being too far from health facilities, lacking appropriate transport in an emergency and inability to obtain adequate and timely professional intervention.

Abdul-Raheem’s argument for the need to increase political will is one of the most compelling I’ve read. Click here to read the entire piece. Then, sign up to be a part of the online discussion of ways to boost progress toward MDG 5 on March 25 at 10 a.m. EST. Dr. Jemima A. Dennis-Antwi, the International Confederation of Midwives’ Regional Midwifery Adviser for Anglophone Africa, and Annie Raja will be part of the live online chat organized by Women’s eNews and the United Nations Millennium Campaign.