In India, haemorrhage, sepsis, obstructed labour and unsafe abortions remain the biggest direct preventable medical causes for maternal deaths. But, the underlying factors, or indirect causes or ‘delays’, in accessing healthcare during pregnancy and childbirth cause many of the maternal and neonatal deaths. Most often these deaths are a result of the inability to recognise danger signs and deciding to seek appropriate medical help for an obstetric emergency, reaching an appropriate obstetric facility and receiving adequate quality of care in such a place.
Source: The Hindu
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Health Ministry will set up the homes close to healthcare centres to improve access, institutional deliveries

The Ministry of Health and Welfare has planned to set up “birth waiting homes” close to healthcare centres to enable pregnant women in remote areas to gain access to prenatal care as their due date nears. Palanquins or carts are to be used to transport pregnant women across difficult terrain in the bid to improve institutional deliveries. “We have already started hiring palanquins to take women from their homes to healthcare facilities under the National Rural Health Mission and the government pays the men who carry the palanquin,” Anuradha Gupta, Mission Director, NRHM, told The Hindu .

The “birth waiting homes” will be constructed within or near the compounds of a health facility.
The pregnant woman would be provided all support and incentives to move into these facilities at least a week before her delivery date.

Source: The Hindu

A simple caesarean section went horribly wrong for a 33-year-old woman after she contracted a rare and deadly bacterial infection.

Vaishali Sawant, a Nalasopara resident, was admitted to Cama and Albless Hospital in CST a month ago after she experienced premature labour pangs. Her husband Sandeep recounted that she never recovered from her surgery and eventually contracted the strain of Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) bacteria in the hospital environs.