I haven't posted in forever...

Well i haven't updated this in a long time, i apologize!
I have come across the subject of Maternal Mortality rates, and i found it incredibly interesting and a sad truth. I had never really realised this was such a large problem until i came across a blog post in the New York Times.

I found a blog this past week on the New York Times web page called "On the Ground" written by Nicholas D. Kristof. In in i found a post from July 15, 2008 called "Saving Mothers, One at a Time".
http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/maternal-health-in-malawi/ (caution, this post is kind of graphic, and may be upsetting to some)
Here is a brief snippet about Sue, the woman who wrote the post; "Sue Makin , the newest contributor to this blog, is an American Presbyterian missionary doctor working at a 190-bed mission hospital in southern Malawi. She has been working in Africa for the past 18 years. According to a 2007 study of global maternal mortality rates, more than two-thirds of deaths among Malawian women of reproductive age are linked to pregnancy or childbirth – a larger proportion than in any of the 171 countries in the study."
Within the post, Sue tells a story about a fellow coworker named Sam Matandala and a call from a nurse midwife Sam would never forget.

The next article i found on the Washington Posts web sight called "A Mothers Final Look at Life"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/11/AR2008101102165.html?hpid=artslot (again, caution. kind of graphic story)
This article is about how joy and death come can come hand in hand in Impoverished Sierra Leone. This article tells the story of an 18 year old girl named Fatmata Jalloh who died giving birth to her first baby boy.
Sierra Leone, located in Africa, in a small impoverished place where it is a gamble on your life to even become pregnant.
"More than 500,000 women a year -- about one every minute -- die in childbirth across the globe, almost exclusively in the developing world, and almost always from causes preventable with basic medical care. The planet's worst rates are in this startlingly poor nation on West Africa's Atlantic coast, where a decade of civil war that ended in 2002 deepened chronic deprivation.
According to the United Nations, a woman's chance of dying in childbirth in the United States is 1 in 4,800. In Ireland, which has the best rate in the world, it is 1 in 48,000. In Sierra Leone, it is 1 in 8."
SO what can we do to stop mothers from dying while giving birth? we can help by donating money for medical supplies, donating time by joining an organization dedicated to helping these woman. ANYTHING
i find it a sad truth that women are still dying from inadequate health care.