Maternal health

Every day, throughout the world, women lose their lives during pregnancy or childbirth, often due to a lack of access to appropriate care. La Chaîne de l'Espoir works to protect the health of women and their children, by facilitating medical care during pregnancy and childbirth.

Background

Maternal health: a priority for saving lives

A woman dies every two minutes

during pregnancy or when giving birth anywhere in the world.

99% of maternal deaths

occur in developing countries.

Only 51% of women

of low-income countries benefit from qualified medical assistance during childbirth.

Source: UN

Since 1990, maternal mortality has fallen by 45%. Nevertheless, more than 800 women around the world lose their lives every day as a result of complications related to pregnancy or childbirth. And for every life lost, another 20 to 30 women suffer complications with serious or lasting consequences.

These deaths and after-effects are not inevitable, and could be avoided for the most part if every mother-to-be had the chance to benefit from medical monitoring and appropriate care during pregnancy, childbirth and after the baby’s birth.

For women living in isolated areas, access to medical care is virtually non-existent. This situation is particularly marked in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where the number of health professionals is very low. Millions of children are thus born in precarious conditions, without the presence of a midwife, doctor or nurse. As a direct consequence of poor pregnancy care, newborn mortality rates are particularly high in many parts of the world.

Against this backdrop, we are mobilizing with a threefold focus on maternal health: ensuring safe deliveries for mothers and newborns, improving the quality of obstetric care and reducing maternal and neonatal mortality and morbidity.

Our action to strengthen screening

Medical care before, during and after pregnancy

Since 2016, La Chaîne de l’Espoir has been committed to improving medical care for women before, during and after pregnancy. We build, equip and support healthcare facilities and reach out to the most vulnerable women to guarantee pregnancy monitoring, antenatal diagnosis, medical and surgical care for pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period, gynecological emergencies, and more.

Afghanistan: a reference maternity hospital in Kabul

In 2016, our association built and opened the Kabul maternity hospital, which complements the Institut Médical Français pour l’Enfant (IMFE), a pediatric hospital we built in 2005. This maternity hospital is the only specialized (type 3) center in Afghanistan for the care of pregnancies, physiological births, maternal and neonatal pathologies and obstetric emergencies. In addition to the follow-up and medical care offered to expectant and new mothers, the most vulnerable women can also be cared for in the Children’s Pavilion. 

 En 2021, 1 492 consultations y ont été réalisées, ainsi que 966 accouchements.

Afghanistan: detection of women in IDP camps

We meet women in Kabul’s displaced persons camps to raise awareness of the risks associated with pregnancy and childbirth, and to identify those in need of urgent gynecological care. Following home births, many women suffer from very debilitating after-effects (tears, incontinence).

The first baby in the Kabul IMFE maternity ward

On November 23, 2016, Kabul Maternity Hospital welcomed its very first birth, marking a historic moment for IMFE .
On that day, a beautiful little girl weighing 3 kg and 52 centimetres was born in IMFE’s brand-new Mother-Child Unit. The mother, herself a midwife, had arrived at the maternity unit the day before for a scheduled caesarean section, the baby being breech. In less than ten minutes, the baby was extracted from his mother’s womb, under the supervision of midwife Agnès Simon and neonatal pediatrician Jean-René Nelson, who ensured that the birth went smoothly.

Training gynecological and obstetrical medical teams

We are mobilizing to strengthen the skills of doctors, surgeons, midwives and medical teams to enable them to offer the highest quality care to expectant and new mothers.

  • Côte d’Ivoire: training staff at the Bingerville maternity hospital
    Since its opening in 2018, we’ve been supporting the medical teams at the Dominique Ouattara Hospital in Bingerville in setting up protocols and training staff in fetal monitoring, perineal re-education, cord care, emergency care for pregnant women, and more. In 2021, the maternity unit performed more than 980 deliveries.
  • Afghanistan: supporting medical teams towards autonomy at the IMFE
    At the French Medical Institute for Children (IMFE) in Kabul, La Chaîne de l’Espoir trains and supports medical teams in gynecology and obstetrics until they are fully autonomous.

Supporting diagnosis: the power of remote ultrasound

Among the care recommended for pregnant women, the WHO recommends an ultrasound scan before the 24th week of pregnancy. However, in developing countries, the lack of qualified doctors and equipment means that not all women can benefit from optimal ultrasound monitoring. Via the dedicated echoesGYN-OBS platform, La Chaîne de l’Espoir’s medical experts can take part in consultation sessions from their workplace. Thousands of kilometers away, at the Institut Médical Français pour la Mère et l’Enfant in Kabul (Afghanistan) and the Hôpital Mère-Enfant in Bingerville (Côte d’Ivoire), doctors and midwives benefit from real-time diagnostic assistance and ongoing distance training.

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