It is well known that maternal conditions are the leading causes of death and disability among women. 99% of these deaths occurs in low resource countries especially Sub-Saharan Africa.
Nearly all maternal deaths are preventable through availability of contraception, timely prenatal and postnatal care, skilled birth attendance and ways to reach emergency care to deal with complications. To obtain all these improvements women have to fight poverty and inequality.
Most of the pictures were not mine but taken from the Internet:
We must help them have a better future.
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Women in Mozambique work the land, but tradition strips their rights of ownership and inheritance
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Women have the right to contraception to empower them, to decrease death by septic abortions, maternal hemorrhages.
Mozambican women must unify and fight for their rights.
Rape, sexual violence are common and specially growing is the harassment of girls students by teachers and fellow students.
Most of the population is still in rural areas where polygamy, early forced marriage remain widespread. Early marriages lead to girls be taken out of school by their husbands, increase illiteracy, and causes high number of pregnancies: 24% of women ages 15 to 19 already have 2 children. Remember most of these are unwanted pregnancies because destitute women have no access to contraception.
Believe or not despite the Mozambican Family Code reads that marriage is "monogamous", polygamy is still very prevalent in rural areas.
Rural women for whom land is the source of their live hoods have no rights to ownership. The houses belongs to the husbands who holds the assets. The husbands can get rid of their women simply throwing them on the streets with no warnings or rights... I know nurses who went through hell because of this tradition but slowly rebuilt their lives. By the way a good nurse from the hospital wants now to find an American husband, she heard they make much better husbands then her ex- Mozambican. If you know of any available American man just let me know...
On top of all the inequalities there are a lot of widows in Mozambique due to the civil war and HIV/AIDS high rates. These are vulnerable women whose traditional customs strip them of their rights specially ownership and inheritance.
The single-parent household led by women have the highest rates of extreme poverty. It's very unheard of single-parent men in this country.
Although Mozambique has ratified the International Women's Right Protection measures violation of these rights is common: persistence of discriminatory laws, violence against women, limited access to property, education and health care as well obstacle to access to justice " African for Women's Right" March 2010
Here are some statistics from UNICEF 2011 for Mozambique and some from the USA to compare. If you want more information just visit UNICEF website.
- Total population: 23.930. 000
- Life expectancy at birth= 50 years USA= 79 years
- Total literacy rate= 56%
- Adult literacy rate female as % of males= 61
- Urbanized population= 31%
- Percentage below international poverty line (US$ 1.25 per day) = 60%
- Maternal mortality ratio lifetime risk= 1/43 (USA= 1/2,400)
- Contraceptive prevalence = 12% ( USA= 79%)
- Child marriage by age 15 = 21%
- Child marriage by age 18 = 56%
Today I say tears to these women who do work very hard, for whom pregnancy and delivery is still a death sentence. I wish them a way of becoming stronger and find their freedom status in the society to give themselves and their children a stronger and more equitable life....
But there are good news in the horizons: Mozambique has eliminated maternal e neonatal tetanus from its statistics and I do have large number of female medical students in my classes.
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