India Faces Reminders of Failing Maternal Safety
by The Daily Eye Team May 16 2015, 2:41 pm Estimated Reading Time: 0 mins, 35 secsPregnant with her first child, 17-year-old Guna did not know she was anemic. Nor was she aware of the complications this could cause because no government female health worker or nurse ever visited her village, located in an inaccessible part of the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh. When she began to hemorrhage after delivering her child at home last year, her family tried to arrange for a vehicle to take her to a health facility. But Guna died before they could do so. Guna's death in September 2014 became known through an investigation by an alliance of nongovernmental organizations. It is among the roughly 44,000 preventable maternal deaths that occur in India every year.