Child birth, a big risk for mums

 FIVE women die per day in PNG resulting from child birth, according to World Vision, a civil society organisation.

Death during child birth is a likely risk for women in PNG, where the mortality rate is 733 per 100,000, equating to five women per day dying during child birth.

This was revealed during the World Vision Pacific Timor Leste side event to the Pacific Island Forum leaders meeting in Port Moresby. 

World Vision country programme director Dr Curt Von Boguslawski said the civil socity organisations (CSOs) that had for the first time joined in to make some suggestions on the agenda for the forum were taking the opportunity to highlight the importance of maternal child health and nutrition.

“We are happy to host this event to pinpoint our emphasis on maternal child health and nutrition. 

“We recognise the Pacific Island Forum (PIF) as a venue where CSOs have not been as vocal as we possibly can and we wish there will be many more PIF where we can contribute because we’re the ones on the ground actually making a difference.

 “World Vision has been operating in the Pacific for the last 30 plus years. Addressing maternal child health is at the core of our business. 

“The region is rich but the resources are not easy to come by; we have limited economic development opportunities that speak differently.

“We have remote locations, far from global markets and prone to natural disasters, in the light of this there’s a fundamental challenge for World Vision which we want to pose to the leaders of the PIF. 

“We believe that the status of women and children in this region is nothing we should be forgetting about.

“A political gathering of this kind provides an opportunity to address some of these pressing issues and we want to make sure that maternal child health is coming back onto the agenda,” said Boguslawski.