Beyond body counts

A qualitative study of lives and loss in Burkina Faso after 'near-miss' obstetric complications

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4598304
AutoresKaterini T Storeng (0000-0003-0032-7006, University of Oslo, autor correspondente), Susan F Murray (0000-0003-0093-3815, King's College London), Mélanie S Akoum (FrIcSaNté), Fatoumata Ouattara (Institut de Recherche pour le Développement), Véronique Filippi (0000-0003-1331-3391, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine)
Ano2010
Volume71
Fascículo10
Páginas1749-1756
Data de publicação2010-11-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoSocial Science & Medicine (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0277-9536 • E-ISSN: 1873-5347
EditoraElsevier BV (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1016/j.socscimed.2010.03.056
PMID20541307
OpenAlexW2018351919
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas20
Referências citadas41

Averting women's pregnancy-related death is today recognised as an international health and development priority. Maternal survival is, in this sense, a success story. There is, however, little research into what happens to the women who survive the severe obstetric complications that are the main causes of maternal mortality. This paper examines findings from repeated in-depth interviews with 64 women who survived a clinically defined 'near-miss.' These interviews were conducted as part of a prospective longitudinal study of women who 'nearly died' of pregnancy-related complications in Burkina Faso, a poor country in West Africa. Drawing on sociological and anthropological perspectives that consider the defining characteristics of 'loss' to be social as much as biomedical, the paper seeks to understand loss as disruption of familiar forms and patterns of life. Women's accounts of their lives in the year following the near-miss event show that such events are not only about blood loss, seizures or infections, but also about a household crisis for which all available resources were mobilised, with a train of physical, economic and social consequences. The paper argues that near-miss events are characterised by the near-loss of a woman's life, but also frequently by the loss of the baby and by further significant disruptions in three overlapping dimensions of women's lives. These include disruption of bodily integrity through injury, ongoing illness and loss of strength and stamina; disruption of the household economy through high expenditure, debts and loss of productive capacity; and disruption of social identity and social stability. Maternal health policy needs to be concerned not only with averting the loss of life, but also with preventing or ameliorating others losses set in motion by an obstetric crisis

Debt · Economic growth · Economics · Job loss · Near miss · Pregnancy · Qualitative research · Social science · Sociology · Unemployment · Global Maternal and Child Health · Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health · Medicine · Migration, Health and Trauma