Vivio and Williams’ recent commentary in this Journal1
discussed the controversy among US-based midwives
about the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM)
and the International Federation of Gynaecologists and
Obstetricians (FIGO) Joint Statement: Management of the
Third Stage of Labor to Prevent Postpartum Haemorrhage.2
As the authors stated, it is difficult to comprehend how
postpartum hemorrhage can be the primary direct cause of
maternal death, given the resources available to women
who give birth in the United States. However, the situation
in a resource-rich setting like the United States is far
different from the resources available in the developing
world, where most maternal mortality occurs. The lack of
skilled attendants at delivery who can provide even the
minimum of care, long transport times to facilities that can
manage uterine atony or severe lacerations of the genital
tract, and unattended obstructed labor leading to a ruptured
uterus conspire to elevate postpartum hemorrhage to its
position as the number one killer of women during childbirth.
These structural factors are exacerbated by the
prevalence of anemia, which is estimated to affect half of
all pregnant women in the world, with that figure rising to
94% in Papua New Guinea, 88% in India, and 86% in
Tanzania.3 Anemia is rarely detected or treated during
pregnancy and often exacerbated by malarial and other
parasitic diseases.4 Although the vast majority of cases of
postpartum hemorrhage have no identifiable risk factor,
young age at marriage5,6 and low contraceptive use among
many women in the developing world result in high total
fertility rates, which results in more grand multiparas
giving birth in low-resource countries compared with more
developed countries.7 Prevention of postpartum hemorrhage
in developing countries is a critical goal.
In this article we discuss the problem of postpartum
hemorrhage in the developing world and describe some of
the newer technologies and strategies that are being developed
for the management and treatment of postpartum
hemorrhage in low-resource settings. We report on information
from recent international meetings, such as the
Bellagio meeting on reduction of maternal mortality,8 the
2003 FIGO XVII World Conference of Gynecologists and
Obstetricians, and the JHPIEGO/United States Agency for
International Development-sponsored “Preventing Postpartum
Hemorrhage: From Research to Practice” meeting in
Bangkok, Thailand, January 2004.