News

Jennifer Anguko was slowly bleeding to death right in the maternity ward of a major public hospital. Only a lone midwife was on duty, the hospital later admitted, and no doctor examined her for 12 hours. An obstetrician who investigated the case said Ms. Anguko, the mother of three young children, had arrived in time to be saved .

 Patricia Zakaliya feared breaking the by-law set by her village head, Traditional Authority Kwataine and so she covered a journey of more than three kilometres on foot from her village to Madzanje Turn-off just to get a lift to Ntcheu District Hospital. This was a journey to give birth to her first child. In 2006, T/A Kwataine and other village heads put up 12 by-laws to encourage pregnant women to go for antenatal checkups and deliver their babies at the hospital. This was done to help reduce maternal deaths.

While substantial progress has been made globally on aspects of child and maternal survival, including efforts to fight malnutrition and major diseases such as AIDS and malaria, the deaths of millions of children and mothers during childbirth have been largely overlooked, say two leading health researchers at the annual world congress of the International Health Economic Association in Toronto, Ontario (July 10–13)

The results from the HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN) 052 study were presented on July 18, 2011 and show that early initiation of antiretroviral treatment leads to a 96% reduction in HIV transmission.