Stories of Mothers Lost, a book by the White Ribbon Alliance, a worldwide movement of grassroots organisations concerned with maternal mortality
Millions of mothers lost
Once a minute, somewhere in the world, a woman dies in pregnancy or childbirth. The tragedy, says Kira Cochrane, is that most of these deaths could be prevented
Mesfin's death starts on the day of her birth, in an Ethiopian village
circumcised by a local woman, and by the age of seven, with no education, she was put to work looking after her family's cattle.
At 13, she was abducted and raped by a 32-year-old farmer, who married her; soon afterwards, she became pregnant
complications proved too difficult
carried Mesfin to the nearest hospital, where both she and her baby died. She was 15
conservative estimate of 536,000 maternal deaths each year
toll could be as high as 872,000
in the poorest, most conflict-riven countries, including Niger, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone, that figure rises to a stark, inexcusable, one in eight
clipped from: lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk