Death in birth

With less than a month to go before my delivery date, maternal deaths are probably the last thing I should be reading about. But a weekend piece in the New York Times was just too important to ignore. In "Where Life's Start is a Deadly Risk," reporter Denise Grady talks about the 536,000 women (more than half of whom are African) killed each year by pregnancy or childbirth. The most tragic thing? The majority of these deaths are preventable. I couldn't agree more with a Tanzanian physician who asks in the article: "Why don't we have a global fund for maternal health, like the one for TB, malaria and AIDS?" Maybe we'll see the creation of such a fund - if enough people read the article and jump to action.