Big drop in maternal mortality during labor

The chance that a Dutch mother dies during pregnancy or childbirth has dropped by 58 percent since 2000. This comes from the report State of the World Mothers 2014 from children's rights organization Save the Children. The Netherlands is the fifth best place in the world, according to the report. Finland is on top of the list. There is low risk of maternal mortality in the Netherlands. In Niger, the chance of maternal death has been the biggest in the last 15 years. This year, Somali women are most at risk for complications. The report focuses on maternity in areas of crisis, looking at, for example, areas devastated by natural disasters or those in the midst of armed conflict, and what these conditions mean for women's access to medical care and education. The report, published on Tuesday, warns that the risk of pregnancies developing complications or mothers not surviving the pregnancy is growing in many industrialized countries. The report fails to give a reason for this statistic, and this is also because experts do not seem to have a plausible explanation. "In the United States many suspect that the rise is being caused by more risky deliveries, among other things, caused by obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and heart- and vascular diseases. Furthermore, women are getting pregnant older and have multiple births due to a rise in artificial insemination." The number of women in the Netherlands giving birth at home instead of a hospital dropped steadily between 1989 and 2009, according to Statistics Netherlands. In 1989 about 38% of women gave birth at home. By 2001, under 32% of women did the same, and less than 25% of births were at home during 2009. At the same time, a study published in the British Medical Journal found “no evidence that planned home birth among low risk women leads to an increased risk of severe adverse maternal outcomes” where a well-trained midwife system exists.