Using data from population surveys from 1982 to 2005, an international group of researchers estimated that in Bangladesh, losing a mother implies that a child has about a 25% chance of reaching 10 years of age.
The numbers speak for themselves. Those who did not lose their mothers had an 89% chance of reaching the ripe, mature and dignified age of 10. This effect is obviously more dramatic for infants who are being breast fed: those babies aged 2 to 5 months, who lost their mother were 25 times more likely to die before ten than those who’s mother still lived on.
Interestingly the effect of a father’s death on infant survival rates was found to be negligible.
This research implies that on top of driving attention to pediatric health, domestic and international public health organizations would do well to pay greater attention to the health of the mother. The correlation between a mother’s health and a child survival is now written in stone, even if that stone should chip apart in some time to come.
To quickly run through the implications of this research, I quote at length the Associated Press report published by the Washington Post:
“Experts said the findings should inspire changes in how authorities tackle child health, beyond the usual strategies like child-focused vaccination campaigns and vitamin supplementation.”
“Because the mother’s death has such devastating effects on the child’s health and survival, improving the mother’s survival will improve the child’s survival,” said Hussain Yusuf, an epidemiologist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Yusuf co-wrote an accompanying commentary and was not linked to the study.”
“Carine Ronsmans, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Lancet study’s lead author, said child health initiatives should include strategies to prevent deaths in all young mothers at childbirth and throughout their lives.”
“She said that in rural Bangladesh, mothers typically breast-feed their children for at least a year. “Removing that biological link, in an area where formula is not popular, has a particularly big impact on children,” Ronsmans said.”
“She was surprised the death of fathers didn’t affect children’s survival rates. She suggested that when fathers die, mothers may get help from their extended family or remarry, offsetting the loss.”
This implies that a mother’s death has cumulative spillover effects (externalities) that accounts for greater negative consequences than might be accounted for by simply considering one death in the family.
Please find an executive summary of the research published in The Lancet, the British Journal of medicine, here. One can retrieve the article in its entirety by registering as a user. I highly recommend that the interested reader look into this research in full.
