First up in our series of contrarian articles on contraception: We need Penicillin, not condoms, in Central Africa. The diversion of health care dollars and medical personel from urgent matters like sanitation and into “family planning,” is something that deeply offends many African recipients of foreign aid. This article was written by an attorney in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
No one can fail to weep at a stillborn child or the death of a mother in childbirth. But it is absurd; it is criminally irresponsible, for the United States and international aid agencies to argue that the solution to the DRC’s calamitous maternal mortality is family planning.
The real solution is quality basic health care. Not conferences about foreign aid. Not plans drawn up in air-conditioned offices in New York. We need real health care. We need $8.4 million worth of penicillin, not $8.4 million worth of condoms. …
Throughout the country, especially in the interior, basic health care and prenatal care is inadequate or nonexistent. There are no midwives and clinics lack minimum conditions of hygiene. Even major cities lack the infrastructure and equipment for emergency care. Where it does exist, only a small minority can afford it. Doctors are poorly trained. Many are not equipped to deal with emergencies in childbirth. In large public hospitals there are excellent physicians, but sometimes they lack antibiotics and sterile gloves.
Malaria is widespread. Eradicated diseases such as trypanosomiasis, leprosy and plague have reappeared. HIV/AIDS affects more than 4 percent of the population between the ages of 15 and 49. In the eastern provinces where fighting is still going on, that figure rises to about 20 percent. According to recent estimates, 750,000 children have lost at least one parent due to sickness. During the 1997-2005 war, 3.9 million of our people died. Most of them succumbed to infectious diseases which they were too weak to withstand because of malnutrition and the stresses of migration.
In these chaotic circumstances, how can the US ambassador seriously propose family planning as a solution? He and his cronies in the aid agencies are living in Never-Never Land.I firmly believe that what the DRC needs to turn around the appalling statistics on maternal deaths is good nutrition, basic health care, good obstetric care during pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum. In industrialized countries, birth-related deaths declined with the development of better obstetric techniques and improvements in the overall health of women. In England and Wales, for example, the maternal mortality rate dropped from more than 550 pregnancy-deaths per 100,000 births in 1931 to less than 50 in 1960, through the use of antibiotics, blood transfusions and the management of hypertensive disorders during pregnancy.
According to the World Bank’s 2006 Development Report, Malaysia and Sri Lanka have managed to reduce maternal mortality by enabling access to midwives and nurses in rural areas and regularly supplying provinces with medicines and medical equipment. Severe bleeding contributes to 44 percent of maternal deaths in Africa, deaths which could be prevented if doctors had access to clean blood.
Read the whole article at Mercator Net.