For a cost of 25 cents per capita per year, SAM has decreased maternal mortality rates by 90% in the villages it serves, exceeding the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals.
What is Maternal Mortality?
According to the World Health Organization, Maternal mortality is “the death of a woman while pregnant or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy, irrespective of the duration and site of the pregnancy, from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy or its management but not from accidental or incidental causes.”
What Causes Maternal Mortality?
The main preventable causes of maternal mortality include severe bleeding and anemia, pregnancy-induced high blood pressure, complicated labor, and infections.
How Can Maternal Mortality Be Prevented?
A few simple interventions can reduce the mortality by 75-90%. Save A Mother trains local Health Activists to educate pregnant women in prenatal care, post-natal care and encourage an institutional delivery. The Activists work as health educators and motivators for pregnant women, encouraging them to seek health care from existing public facilities. They do not replace public health workers but supplement them.
Where is Save a Mother’s Impact?
Save a Mother is currently working to reduce maternal mortality in Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, and Telengana, India.
In Uttar Pradesh, Save A Mother trained over 4,000 village health activists in over 800+ villages in Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka. Save a Mother is currently active in over 1,100 villages.
In Karnataka Save a Mother program started in April 2012 in Gadag district. Since then we have expanded to cover a total of 167 villages. Save A Mother has trained over 1000+ village health activists in 163 villages.