Our Bodies Overseas

Over the weekend I found myself discussing the best place to have a baby in the Bay Area. Several hospitals were compared, one was high-tech, the other respectful of women who want to bring in a mid-wife or birth coach. And then I picked up the Sunday New York Times. There I read Nicholas D. Kristof's harrowing tale of a young woman in Cameroon who needlessly dies in childbirth. He even goes so far as to donate his own blood. He writes:

Prudence, 24, was from a small village and already had three small children. As she was in labor to deliver her fourth, an untrained midwife didn’t realize she had a cervical blockage and sat on Prudence’s stomach to force the baby out — but instead her uterus ruptured and the fetus died.

Prudence’s family carried her to the hospital on a motorcycle, but once she was there the doctor, Pascal Pipi, demanded $100 for a Caesarian to remove the fetus. The fetus was decomposing inside her, and an infection was raging in her abdomen — but her family had total savings of only $20, so she lay down in the maternity ward and began to die.

I arrived the next day, interviewed Dr. Pipi about maternal mortality — and found Prudence fading away in the next room. Dr. Pipi said she needed a blood transfusion before the operation could begin, so a Times colleague, Naka Nathaniel, and I donated blood (yes, the needles were sterile) and cash.

The transfusion helped Prudence, and she grew strong enough to reach out her hand and respond to people around her. Dr. Pipi said the operation would begin promptly, and Prudence’s family was ecstatic. But as we waited in the hospital lobby, Dr. Pipi sneaked out the back door of the hospital and went home for the night.

It wasn’t just the doctor who failed Prudence, but the entire system. He did operate the next morning, but by then the infection had spread further — and the hospital had no powerful antibiotics. Prudence’s breathing grew strained, as her stomach ballooned with the infection and the bag of urine from her catheter overflowed. The nurses couldn’t be bothered with a poor villager like her.

That night she began vomiting and spitting blood. She slipped into a coma, and a towel beside her head grew soggy with blood and vomit. On Tuesday afternoon, she finally passed away.

Intellectually, I knew that women in Africa had a 1-in-20 lifetime risk of dying in childbirth. But it was wrenching to see this young mother of three fade and die so needlessly.

As Gloria Steinem pointed out in discussing the need for the Women's Media Center, it goes un-noticed that 6 million women around the world die every year just for being women. "It's a holocaust of women every year," she said.

My mom called me crazy in tears after watching Christiane Amanpour's report on AIDS orphans in Kenya.

My question is, how many women and children must die on camera or in a column before this country cares? Kristof points out that we spend more on pet food in this country than it would take to provide maternal health care around the world. Please. Women's health must rank somewhere near our favorite pets. Even if they are women we never see or hear about.