“The death rates from childbirth and from childbed fever for the registration area of this country are not falling; during the 13 years from 1900 to 1913 they have shown no demonstrable decrease. These years have been marked by a revolution in the control of certain other preventable diseases, such as typhoid, diphtheria, and tuberculosis. During that time the typhoid rate has been cut in half, the rate of tuberculosis markedly reduced, and the rate for diphtheria reduced to less than one-half. During this period the death rate from childbirth has decreased in England and Wales, Ireland, Australia, and Japan. The other foreign countries studied show stationary or slightly increasing rates. The death rate from childbed fever has decreased only in England and Wales, Ireland, and Scotland.
“These facts point to the need in this country and in foreign countries of higher standards of care for women at the time of childbirth.
“The low standards at present existing in this country result chiefly from two causes: (1) General ignorance of the dangers connected with childbirth and of the need for proper hygiene and skilled care in order to prevent them; (2) difficulty in the provision of adequate care due to special problems characteristic of this country. Such problems vary greatly in city and in country. In the country inaccessibility of any skilled care, due to pioneer conditions, is a chief factor.
“Improvement will come about only through a general realization of the necessity for better care at childbirth. If women demand better care, physicians will provide it, medical colleges will furnish better training in obstetrics, and communities will realize the vital importance of community measures to insure good care for all classes of women.”
While the figures given by Dr. Meigs are a startling indication of the great number of maternal fatalities occurring in various parts of the country, no estimates can be made of the number of mothers who survive only to suffer from a degree of preventable ill health which limits or defeats the well-being and happiness of their households.
MATERNAL MORTALITY FROM ALL CONDITIONS CONNECTED WITH CHILD BIRTH IN THE UNITED STATES AND CERTAIN OTHER COUNTRIES. By Grace L. Meigs, M.D. U. S. Department of Labor, Children’s Bureau, 1917.
STATISTICS RELATING TO CHILDBIRTH IN THE UNITED STATES AND IN CERTAIN FOREIGN COUNTRIES
For the last two decades civilized countries have been absorbed in the problem of preventing the enormous and needless waste of human life represented by their infant death rates. The importance of this problem has been felt more keenly in the last two years in the countries now at war; in these countries the efforts toward saving the lives of babies have redoubled since the war began. Side by side with this problem, another, which is only of late finding its true place, is that of the protection of the lives and health of mothers during their pregnancy and confinement. This is a question so closely bound up with that of the prevention of infant mortality that the two can not be separated.
It is now realized that a large proportion of the deaths of babies occur in the first days and weeks of life, and that these deaths can be prevented only through proper care of the mother before and at the birth of her baby. It is also realized that breast feeding through the greater part of the first year of the baby’s life is the chief protection from all diseases; and that mothers are much more likely to be able to nurse their babies successfully if they receive proper care before, at, and after childbirth. Moreover, in the progress of work for the prevention of infant mortality it has become ever clearer that all such work is useful only in so far as it helps the mother to care better for her baby. It must be plain, then, to what a degree the sickness or death of the mother lessens the chances of the baby for life and health.
This question has also another side. Each death at childbirth is a serious loss to the country. The women who die from this cause are lost at the time of their greatest usefulness to the State and to their families; and they give their lives in carrying out a function which must be regarded as the most important in the world.