A 23-year-old woman died due to heart failure during delivery in a village in Tamil Nadu. It was only after this incident that his family came to know that he had a heart problem since birth, which was not detected. They also did not know that if she had been examined in the early stages of pregnancy, perhaps her life could have been saved. The primary health center in her village neither had good testing facilities nor was there a skilled obstetrician who could understand the warning signs.
However, now things are about to change. The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) is now funding a study. This study will explore how much maternal mortality is caused by heart disease in pregnant women and what treatment protocols can be developed to prevent future deaths. This is necessary because to reduce maternal mortality in India, major risk factors like infection and excessive bleeding have been controlled to a great extent, but now heart disease is emerging as a major risk factor.
70 percent reduction in maternal mortality rate
Explaining the study, Dr. Anjali Singh, a senior scientist at ICMR, said that the maternal mortality rate in India has reduced by 70 percent in the last two decades. However, this figure has now become stable. We need to identify new risk factors that are still causing maternal deaths. In our study, we will examine how big a threat heart disease is to pregnant women and what screening methods are needed to detect it.
Complicated pregnancy will be detected early.
Dr. Anjali further said that we will also examine what facilities and expertise are needed in primary and secondary health care centers so that complicated pregnancies can be detected early and patients can get proper treatment. This study will be conducted across India and will include women from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Based on the results of the study, ICMR will prepare guidelines for heart disease screening for pregnant women and make recommendations to strengthen primary health care centers. It is expected that this new study of ICMR will play an important role in further reducing the maternal mortality rate in India.
