Obscene death rattles

“Statistics are people with the tears wiped from their eyes.” The 2011 Family Health Survey, for example, documents that 221 mostly faceless mothers now die in every 100,000 live births.

That figure means nothing in isolation. But set it in context and a stark contrast emerges: Today, more Filipino women die in childbirth than in the early 1990s.

Then and now, most of those deaths were preventable. More infants are orphaned today than in 2006. “Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers? Ere the sorrow comes with years?” Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote.

In an op-ed article “A listening Church?” (Inquirer, 7/3/12), sociologist Mary Racelis provides a useful matrix. There has been a tragic U-turn in death rates for mothers, she points out.

Less-than-adequate programs whittled down maternal deaths, ever so slowly, from 209 in 1990 to 162 deaths in 2006. President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was then halfway into her protracted stay in Malacañang. We were supposed to speed up this sluggish curbing of deaths.

The exact opposite happened instead. More mothers die today. The maternal mortality ratio surged to 221 per 100,000 live births, Racelis notes. That exceeds the 209 deaths tracked in 1990.

Our chance of meeting Millennium Development Goal No. 5—to slash maternal deaths to 52 in three years—is zero. “Goal 5 is least likely to be achieved by 2015,” the National Economic and Development Authority warned. That 94 other countries are also lagging is consuelo de bobo.

We lag behind Asian countries in giving mothers a better-than-even chance for fuller lives. Malaysia, for example, pruned maternal death rates to 31 and China to 38. “Sri Lanka and Honduras led the way in slashing maternal mortality,” Nicolas Kristoff of New York Times reports.

These countries show that premature death is not inevitable for our mothers, who constitute one of the country’s most vital resources. “The biggest themes of life are put into the best focus when held up against the very sharp light of mortality.” Then, why hasn’t this unstanched bloodletting triggered alarm bells?

Dry, antiseptic statistics induce widespread “mego” (or “mine eyes glaze over”). The media drool over trivia like “the grandiose birthday celebration of former first lady Imelda Marcos” and squabbles over pork barrel. Were we in the media remiss in explaining the significance of premature graves for mothers?

The National Statistics Office anchored its latest survey of 53,000 women of reproductive age over a 7-year period, explains NSO director Socorro Abejo. Sure, there were flaws like overlapping reference periods. Nonetheless, the bottom line didn’t budge: “a rough estimate of 200 maternal mortality rate.”

Maternal burial plots form a sensitive gauge of a country’s health structures. Health Secretary Enrique Ona was candid: “If  it is high, your system is not good enough,” he said. “No change in statistical data means it did not get worse for pregnant women. But it did not get any better either.”

A stagnation in death rates for mothers is obscene. There is a critical need for legislation to address structural barriers, Ona added. These include: overhauling of laws on midwifery and other health professions as well as consolidating health systems for local governments. For universal health care, there is need to pass the reproductive health bill.

Local governments are where the action is. LGUs can reach where most victims cluster: remote upland barangays, coastal fishing villages, or city slums. Often ill-fed school dropouts, these women lack access to what is, at best, patchy health services.

“Giving midwives further training in life-saving skills could prevent up to 80 percent of maternal deaths.” These mothers have “no escape routes,” i.e. options that give them “quality information that would enable them to avoid unwanted pregnancies or space pregnancies, and plan families.”

Look a little closer. Only 6 out of 10 Filipino mothers deliver babies with properly trained birth attendants. In contrast, almost 99 percent of births in Thailand have medical personnel present. Out of every 100 Filipino doctors, 68 practice abroad. Over 164,000 nurses left for “those faraway places with strange-sounding names” over the past four decades. “A health care brain drain is strangling [public] hospitals.”

Underground abortionists account for 12 percent of maternal deaths. The University of the Philippines Population Institute estimates that 560,000 abortions are induced yearly. Only 90,000 mothers get postabortion care. In 2008, about half of 3.4 million pregnancies were unintended.

These women should be the primary concern of LGUs. The fact is that far too many LGUs don’t bother with voiceless endangered mothers. After winning a 2-year election protest in a Cebu town, the new officials  promptly released back wages—for themselves. “Shameless,” snapped the SunStar.

Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo’s memo circular No. 2010-138 bounces claims for honoraria, lakbay-aral junkets and such. The European Union has signed a check (for P440 million) to buff up finance management in LGUs. The project enhances the capacity of local governments to generate revenue and allocate and spend public funds more effectively, EU Ambassador Guy Ledoux explained.

It is harsh to say we’ve turned a deaf ear to the death rattle in the throats of thousands of young mothers. But it is true.

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