Family Care International Reflects on “A Price Too High to Bear”

In a post featured last week on Family Care International’s blog, Vice President Martha Murdock provides an in-depth discussion of A Price too High to Bear, a new report documenting the far-reaching consequences of maternal deaths on families in Kenya. She writes:

Last week in Nairobi, a range of partners — from the Kenyan government, UN agencies, donor countries, and many NGOs and research organizations from the national and county levels — came together for a presentation of new research that has the potential to increase the momentum of efforts to save the lives of nearly 300,000 women who die each year (5,500 of them in Kenya) from causes related to pregnancy and childbirth.

Each of these avoidable, premature deaths is a tragedy in its own right, and a terrible injustice. Each of these women — some of them barely more than girls — has a right to life and health, and to a standard of health care that protects her from preventable illness, injury, and death.

But we who work to improve maternal health have argued for years that each of these deaths also brings countless additional layers of loss, pain, and destruction. The tragic, sudden death of a woman in the prime of life — in many cases already a mother and often the most economically productive member of the family — begins a cascade of loss and pain that upends the lives of those around her: her newborn baby (if it survives) and her older children, husband, parents, and other members of her family and community.

Up until now, however, we haven’t had the hard data to support our case, to help us persuade governments, donors, and policy makers that investments in maternal health are also investments in children, in stable families, in education and community development, and ultimately in stronger national economies. Now, thanks to a study conducted in Kenya by FCI, the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), and the KEMRI-CDC Research and Public Health Collaboration, we know that the data behind that argument is very powerful indeed.

To read the full post, and view some of the news coverage prompted by the report, visit the FCI blog.