[Mb-civic] Nicholas Kristof

[Mike Blaxill]

Mr. Bush, This Is Pro-Life?
    By Nicholas D. Kristof
    The New York Times

    Sunday 23 October 2005
	
    Zinder, Niger - When I walked into the
maternity hospital here, I wished that President
Bush were with me.

    A 37-year-old woman was lying on a stretcher,
groaning from labor pains and wracked by
convulsions. She was losing her eyesight and
seemed about to slip into a coma from eclampsia,
a complication of pregnancy that kills 50,000
women a year in the developing world. Beneath
her, cockroaches skittered across the floor.

    Fathi Ali rode a camel for 40 miles across
the desert to reach a clinic, however before she
could get proper medical attention she lost her
unborn child.

    "We're just calling for her husband," said
Dr. Obende Kayode, an obstetrician. "When he
provides the drugs and surgical materials, we can
do the operation," a Caesarean section.

    Dr. Kayode explained that before any surgery
can begin, the patient or family members must pay
$42 for a surgical kit with bandages, surgical
thread and antibiotics.

    In this case, the woman - a mother of six
named Ramatou Issoufou - was lucky. Her husband
was able to round up the sum quickly, without
having to sell any goats. Moreover, this
maternity hospital had been equipped by the U.N.
Population Fund - and that's why I wished Mr.
Bush were with me. Last month, Mr. Bush again
withheld all U.S. funds from the U.N. Population
Fund.

    The Population Fund promotes modern
contraception, which is practiced by only 4
percent of women in Niger, and safe childbirth.
But it has the money to assist only a few areas
of Niger, and Mrs. Issoufou was blessed to live
in one of them.

    Nurses wheeled her into the operating
theater, scrubbed her belly and administered a
spinal anesthetic. Then Dr. Kayode cut open her
abdomen and reached inside to pull out a healthy
6-pound, 6-ounce boy. (A video of the delivery.)

    After removing the placenta, Dr. Kayode
stitched up Mrs. Issoufou. Her convulsions
passed, and it was clear that she and the baby
would survive. For all the criticism heaped on
the U.N., these were two more lives saved by the
U.N. Population Fund - no thanks to the Bush
administration.

    Even when they don't die, mothers often
suffer horrific childbirth injuries. In the town
of Gouré, a 20-year-old woman named Fathi Ali was
lying listlessly on a cot, leaking urine. After
she was in labor for three days, her mother and
her aunt had put her on a camel and led her 40
miles across the desert to a clinic - but midway
in the journey the baby was stillborn and she
suffered a fistula, an internal injury that
leaves her incontinent.

    Village women are the least powerful people
on earth. That's why more than 500,000 women die
every year worldwide in pregnancy - and why we in
the West should focus more aid on preventing such
deaths in poor countries.

    Mr. Bush and other conservatives have blocked
funds for the U.N. Population Fund because
they're concerned about its involvement in China.
They're right to be appalled by forced
sterilizations and abortions in China, and they
have the best of intentions. But they're wrong to
blame the Population Fund, which has been pushing
China to ease the coercion - and in any case the
solution isn't to let African women die. (Two
American women have started a wonderful
grass-roots organization that seeks to make up
for the Bush cuts with private donations; its
website is www.34millionfriends.org.)

    After watching Dr. Kayode save the life of
Mrs. Issoufou and her baby, I was ready to drop
out of journalism and sign up for medical school.
But places like Niger need not just doctors, but
resources.

    Pregnant women die constantly here because
they can't afford treatment costing just a few
dollars. Sometimes the doctors and nurses reach
into their own pockets to help a patient, but
they can't do so every time.

    "It depends on the mood," Dr. Kayode said.
"If the [staff] feel they can't pay out again,
then you just wait and watch. And sometimes she
dies."

    A few days earlier, a pregnant woman had
arrived with a dangerously high blood pressure of
250 over 130; it was her 12th pregnancy. Dr.
Kayode prescribed a medicine called Clonidine for
the hypertension, but she did not have the $13 to
buy it. Nor could she afford $42 for a Caesarean
that she needed.

    During childbirth, right here in this
hospital, she hemorrhaged and bled to death.

    Somewhere in the world, a pregnant woman dies
like that about once a minute, often leaving a
handful of orphans behind. Call me naïve, but I
think that if Mr. Bush came here and saw women
dying as a consequence of his confused policy, he
would relent. This can't be what he wants - or
what America stands for.