CLAIM: 120 000 women die giving birth
SOURCE: Newsday
VERDICT: False
The Newsday of 21 September 2022 ran a maternal mortality article headlined ‘120 000 women die giving birth’.
The headline is in quotes implying that this is a quote from elsewhere. The article then goes on to quote the Zimbabwe Statistics’ 2022 Population and Housing Census Mortality and Orphanhood Preliminary Results.
In the introduction, the article states that, “ At least four women are dying every day while giving birth in Zimbabwe and the country has recorded a staggering 121 078 deaths in the last 12 months, according to the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (ZimStat).”
The math isn’t mathing
The Newsday article is a combination of misunderstanding the Zim Stat report as well as calculations based on the wrong figures.
The Zim Stat report states that, “ A total of 121,078 deaths were reported in the last 12 months preceding the census. Crude death rate was 8 deaths per 1,000 population.”
The report provides the definition of crude death rate as the number of deaths per 1,000 population in a given year.
This means that the 121 078 ‘maternal deaths’ referred to by the Newsday are not maternal deaths, but are ALL deaths in the country.
Maternal mortality rate is then given by Zim Stat as 363 in the report. MMR is defined as the number of maternal deaths per live birth, multiplied by a conventional factor of 100,000.
The report states that, “A total of 1,589 maternal deaths were reported against 437,478 live births.”
This makes it clear that 1 589 women died, not the 120 000 that the Newsday talks about.
Interestingly, the newspaper quotes a United Nations Population Fund programmes specialist Piason Mlambo, who says the statistics showed that the country was recording an average of four daily deaths during labour.
This is correct. 4 daily deaths multiplied by 365 days in a year total 1 460 deaths in a year which is more or less the Zim Stat figure of 1 589 in the report and not 120 000 as in the newspaper article.
If the number was 120 000, the daily death rate of women having children would be 328 women dying every day; almost 14 every hour.
Maternal Mortality in the country
Despite the grossly exaggerated figures in the Newsday article, maternal mortality remains a concern in the country. It has, however, been on a downward trend from a high of 685 in 2005.
Findings by the Zimbabwe Maternal and Perinatal Mortality Study Group reported a significant decline in Zimbabwe’s MMR from 657 in 2007–2008 to 217 in 2018–2019, which is supported by other data sources such as the Demographic and Health Survey; Multiple Cluster Indicator Survey and Maternal Mortality Estimation InterAgency Group.
“Analysis of the changes in causes of death from this study showed that HIV mortality decreased by 81% in WRAs (women of reproductive age) and by 91% in pregnant women. The interventions against the direct causes of maternal mortality must have also contributed to the decline in the MMR, as the cause of death analysis showed a 61% decrease in pregnancy-related deaths due to direct causes,” the report states.
The only agency that reports a very high figure is the UNFPA on its website where it states that, “Maternal mortality in Zimbabwe currently stands at 614 deaths per 100,000 live births, one of the highest maternal mortality rates worldwide.”
It is not clear, however, on the website how current these figures are.
Conclusion
The claim by Newsday that 120 000 women died giving birth is false. The correct figure is 1 589. In writing the article, the Newsday failed to differentiate between crude deaths and maternal deaths.
