Medical Causes of Maternal mortality:

Medical Causes of Maternal mortality:
1. The most common cause of maternal mortality is Bleeding- before, during, or after child birth. This may account for almost 25% of all deaths.. If anaemia is already there , the blood loss may be fatal.
2. Sepsis: Infections during the process of child birth accounts for some 15% of deaths. Early diagnosis and treatment with proper Antibiotics is life saving.
3, Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy accountfor 12% of maternal deaths. Good quality of ante¬natal care including routine measurements of blood pressure picks this problem up early when it is relatively easy to treat without affecting mother or child. Untreated at this stage, the woman may develop fits (eclampsia) which is life threatening to mother and child unless prompt skilled medical care and appropriate drugs (especially magnesium sulfate) are available. In some cases surgery may also be required.
4 Prolonged or Obstructed Labour accounts for about 8% of deaths and is due to unsafe abortions. This is much more in some states where there is less access to safe services for
medical termination of pregnancy (MTP).
5. Another large number of deaths (about 20%) are due to exacerbation of medical ailments occurring during pregnancy when the body's resistance is diminished. Anemia, is one of the most trequent and most preventable of such medical causes. Other causes are malaria in the high endemic areas, hepatitis, heart disease and potentially HIV infections too.
Pregnancies that are more likely to face complications and end up as deaths are termed high risk. For example first pregnancies are more likely to face complications; short women are more likely to have obstructed labour; underweight and undernourished women are more likely to have many of the above complications. However though these correlations exist, the number of women who apparently do not have any such risk factors but who still develop complications at child birth is so high that the advice now is to treat all child-births as being potentially risky. Thus when we estimate the requirement of services, a good thumb-rule is:
15 out of every 100 pregnancies are likely to face a complication requiring skilled assistance, 5 out of every 100 pregnancies would ideally need surgery (cesarean section surgery).
Thus, in a population of 100,000 there are likely to be 3000 pregnancies in a year, of which 450 would have complications and 150 would require surgery and we cannot truly predict which of the 450 or 150 they would be. Thus, unless all 3000 are able lo access skilled care, about 150 would be dying every year.