Risking death to give birth in Papua New Guinea

UNICEF Australia’s advocacy manager, Anna Dekker, recently visited Papua New Guinea (PNG) to examine UNICEF’s work taking place in the field.

SYDNEY, 30 March 2010 – Visiting Port Moresby General Hospital is an assault on the senses.

It is only 10am but without any air-conditioning the temperature at the children’s ward of the Port Moresby General Hospital is already sweltering. There is a constant noise of crying and moaning children.

There are approximately 70 children in beds lined up along the walls. Family members are lying next to the children or sitting next to the beds. Some of the children are just days old. In a small side room a very young girl is hooked up to the only oxygen machine that the hospital owns.

My eye falls on a young woman lying on a bed in a corner. At first it seems she is a patient until I notice her tiny little baby girl wrapped up in blankets lying next to her. The mother explains to me that her one week-old daughter, Lucy, was born three months premature. While initially admitted in the neonatal ward, Lucy was now “too old” to stay there and had to be relocated to the children’s ward.

Lucy is still extremely fragile and wrapped in layers of clothes and blankets to keep her warm. Earlier that day there had been a small victory when the mother had managed to breastfeed Lucy for the first time. Yet despite this progress, her life still very much hangs in the balance.

Lucy’s story impacted me deeply as it reminded me of my sister who, just over a year ago, suffered pre-eclampsia and gave birth to a baby boy two and half month premature. The difference between my sister and this woman in Port Moresby was that my sister lives in Australia and gave birth in a clean hospital room with access to trained staff and personnel, proper medical supplies and a clean and air-conditioned hospital room and everything else that was required to ensure that both my sister and nephew were healthy and alive. 

The difference is simply location. A woman in PNG is 242 times more likely to die during pregnancy than a woman in Australia and a newborn baby in PNG is 10 times more likely to die during the first 28 days of its life than a baby in Australia. Looking at Lucy and her mother, I couldn’t help but wonder whether my little nephew and even my sister would have still been alive had they been living in Papua New Guinea.

The most disturbing thought is that Lucy’s mother is actually one of the lucky ones in PNG, who had access to antenatal care and supervised labour. In PNG only 53 per cent of women deliver their babies under supervision.  Due to the lack of skilled medial staff and the long distance women have to travel to access health facilities, the other half of women are forced to give birth at home with no supervision, equipment or capacity to access health services if anything goes wrong.

The devastating rate of maternal mortality in PNG is not only the result of access and quality of health care services but also in large part by the second-class status of women in PNG. As the PNG Taskforce on Maternal Health points out: “gender issues cannot be separated from health issues… maternal mortality is an indicator of disparity and inequity between men and women and it’s extent a sign of women’s place in society and their access to social, health and nutrition services and economic opportunities”.

About UNICEF
UNICEF is on the ground in over 150 countries and territories to help children survive and thrive, from early childhood through adolescence. The world’s largest provider of vaccines for developing countries, UNICEF supports child health and nutrition, good water and sanitation, quality basic education for all boys and girls, and the protection of children from violence, exploitation, and AIDS. UNICEF is funded by the voluntary contributions of individuals, businesses, foundations and governments.

For more information, please contact:
Martin Thomas, UNICEF Australia
0401 332 399
mthomas@unicef.org.au

Martha Tattersall, UNICEF Australia
0421 570 393
mtattersall@unicef.org.au