Two years after agreeing to it, Pakistan recognises maternal mortality as a human rights issue

ISLAMABAD:

It took the National Assembly (NA) two years to approve a bill classifying preventable maternal mortality and morbidity as a human rights abuse. However it is yet unclear how much longer it will take before the bill is approved in the Senate, signed by the president and passed into law.

MNA Yasmeen Rehman and thirteen other parliamentarians jointly presented the resolution in the assembly on November 23. Pakistan had agreed to adopt the United Nation’s Human Rights Council’s Resolution on Preventable Maternal Mortality and Morbidity and Human Rights back in 2009.

While talking to The Express Tribune, Rehman said, “Maternal mortality is also a form of violence against women as it affects her both physically and psychologically. Family members are often behind this. Therefore there was a need to recognise it as a human right issue.”

Every day, a number of women die while giving birth in Pakistan, mainly due to the lack of access to health facilities, shortages of proper transport and untrained midwives.

“Women living in remote areas are deprived of their right to have access to the basic health facilities, which is the prime responsibility of the state,” she said.

“The resolution would be converted into a law as the government is planning to move a bill on the subject in the upcoming NA session, and we hope it will help decrease the maternal mortality rate in the country,” Rehman said.

Ministry of Human Rights Director General Farkhanda Aurangzeb acknowledged that Basic Health Units across the country lacked a service delivery system. Quoting an example from Mastung in Balochistan, she said that women in labour have to be taken to Quetta on tractors, some of whom die due to the added stress of travel.

Rutgers World Population Foundation Country Director Qadeer Baig said maternal death is a “clear violence” against women. “These deaths [can be prevented] with basic health facilities,” he added.

Baig said that according to the Pakistan Demographic Health Survey, 89 pregnant women die every day in Pakistan and that the maternal mortality rate is 276/100,000. The ratio in Balochistan is even higher at 786/100,000. The maternal mortality rate in the United States, in contrast, was 11/100,000 in 2005. Baig said the resolution has been approved by the Balochistan, K-P and Sindh assemblies, and was awaiting approval from the NA.

“Now the Punjab assembly will focus on adopting the resolution. Besides this, there is a need to allocate more resources towards maternal health to ensure safe motherhood in the country,” he said.

Professor Syeda Batool, a senior gynaecologist at Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, said that due to the lack of awareness and untrained midwives, a majority of women die because of excessive bleeding at home, eclampsia, infections, unsafe abortions and miscarriages.

“Pregnant women [in rural areas] are treated worse than animals due to illiteracy, poor health facilities and family members forcing them to deliver babies with only an untrained midwife, confined within the home,” she said.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 27^th, 2011.