During my two week trip to Namibia at the end of May, the national media was humming with renewed interest in the country’s alarming maternal death rate. Three women died of preventable obstetric complications in Namibia’s primary tertiary hospital in the past month alone. Namibia’s maternal death rate has doubled in a decade and the contributing factors are complex: rural populations without accessible clinics, lack of sufficient antenatal care for pregnant women, lack of emergency obstetric capacity in regional hospitals, and a deficit of health care professionals in the public system. In the DRC community, an informal settlement outside the town of Swakopmund, C2C’s maternal and child health clinic will open next month and will provide comprehensive pre- and post-natal care, immunizations for children <1 year of age, and urgently needed family planning services.
See this story at AllAfrica.com for more details about how the Namibian Ministry of Health is viewing and tackling its maternal death crisis:
