by ami31 | May 9, 2021 | Dashboard, Visualization
Childbirth is considered to be a landmark and joyous moment in any woman’s life. And although health experts say that no two childbirth experiences are the same, it is quite astounding that this can, in many cases, reach the extreme of death. According to statistics released by UNICEF, the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Population Division, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the World Bank Group, around 2.8 million pregnant women and newborns die every year of preventable causes [1]. This turns childbirth into an event to be feared as it poses a significant threat to the lives of many women across the globe. According to the United Nations’ , quality education is defined as one the of the seventeen sustainable development goals (SDGs), so how can education help mitigate childbirth mortality?
“Pregnancy is not a disease. It should not lead to deaths. Every maternal death should be regarded as an abnormality.” – Vivianne Ihekweazu, Director of the Nigerian Health Watch [2]
How are Childbirth Deaths Related to Education?
The World Development Indicators data from the World Bank [3] allows us to look into the impact of education on childbirth by exploring the percentage of births that are handle by skilled health staff. In the figure below, we plot the average life expectancy at birth in years with respect to the average percentage of births attended by skilled staff for each country. There is a clear positive correlation between the two variables. We therefore conclude that children who are delivered by skilled health workers during labor are more likely to have a higher life expectancy.
However, the impact of having educated people overseeing child delivery does not stop here. Unfortunately, carrying out child delivery without proper understanding of the necessary health procedures has more alarming implications. In the dashboard below, we notice a sharp decrease in both maternal mortality (women dying during labor) and neonatal mortality (newborns dying at birth) in countries where more childbirths are handled by skilled health workers. This implies that many of the childbirth related deaths can be attributed to the lack of necessary health skills.
Where are these Childbirth Deaths Mostly Occurring?
Below we find the places that suffer the most from this by selecting the countries that have a below average percentage of births attended by skilled staff.
By looking at the geographical distribution of these countries we unsurprisingly find that the majority is located in Africa. Furthermore, we notice that the educational attainment in these countries is significantly lower than countries that have more professionally handled childbirths. This is an expected causality since to have more skilled people perform childbirth procedures we need more educated people.
So the Solution Is, Educate More People!
“The benefits of education permeate all walks of life right from the moment of birth.” – Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO [4]
In light of the above, we clearly need to have more educated people that are able to professionally handle childbirth procedures. This is especially needed in developing countries where childbirth mortality is more pronounced. A key approach strategy here is to educate the local birth attendants and community midwives that are already active in these communities. These local and community health workers are already more connected to the women and families in their towns making their newly found skills more accessible and allowing them to spread health awareness to pregnant women in their communities [5]. Finally some communities in rural Africa are located in remote locations faraway from any medical supply and service centers. Therefore, setting up portable medical outposts near these towns would greatly enhance the quality of services provided by birth attendants.
References
[2] E. Onyeji, “Despite having highest maternal mortality in Africa, Nigeria’s situation still underreported – Report,”
Premium Times Nigeria, 03-Dec-2020. [Online]. Available:
https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/429266-despite-having-highest-maternal-mortality-in-africa-nigerias-situation-still-underreported-report.html.
[3] https://datatopics.worldbank.org/world-development-indicators/
[4] “Education can save lives, help reach sustainable development goals – UN agency,”
UN News, 18-Sep-2014. [Online]. Available:
https://news.un.org/en/story/2014/09/477702-education-can-save-lives-help-reach-sustainable-development-goals-un-agency.
[5] D. Shikuku and C. Ameh, “Investing in midwifery training and education for improved maternal and newborn outcomes,”
On Medicine, 19-Mar-2021. [Online]. Available:
https://blogs.biomedcentral.com/on-medicine/2021/03/19/midwifery-training-education-maternal-newborn-outcomes-isrctn/.
by Sara Dabbous | May 7, 2020 | Dashboard, Visualization
Since I started working in the healthcare sector I’ve always been interested in knowing more about this industry. As such, while exploring the WDI Data I studied several healthcare indicators and it turns out – Lebanon is doing better than we thought! I was intrigued to know what’s beyond those indicators, and luckily I found a detailed dataset about Primary Health Care Centers in Lebanon on The Humanitarian Data Exchange, I was surprised to know we had this many centers.
Could this visualization be a sign of a sound healthcare system ?
Did this awareness in healthcare aid us in containing the Covid-19?
Do you think there is a better future for the healthcare system for Lebanon, or will it be worst?
Personally, I am optimistic..
So here are some things I didn’t know:
- There are 174 Operational Primary Healthcare Centers in Lebanon
- There are 25 PHC funded by UNHCR
- There are 100 PHC that provide subsidized services.
- Nabatieh has 0 operational PHCs.
- The North governorate has the highest number of operational PHC: 36
In this dashboard, I prepared – using Tableau – a map that shows the different Operational PHC locations in Lebanon filtered by UNHCR Funding. Alongside it, is a bar chart showing the percentage of operational PHC in each Governorate. Finally, at the bottom, you can find a stacked bar chart representing the number of operational PHC per governorate, highlighting those who offer subsidized services.
by Mira Dannawi | May 5, 2020 | Visualization
As the World is today coping with the new virus COVID-19 that spread five months ago, leading to millions of deaths behind, it has been proven that health is the most important component on the human life, and that the existence of advanced, progressive and up to date health care and health centers are crucial for an efficient health assistance for a whole given nation. As such, I found in the World bank dataset some indicators that were efficient enough to picture the correlation between health expenditures and the lifetime of infants and adults.
We can spot how health expenditure per capita varies from region to region, leaving a considerable influence on life expectancy. In fact, Europe, that has the highest health expenditure(1,200,000 $), has the highest life expectancy recording 77 years. Africa that has 61,347$ expenditures, expects an average age for its population equal to 56 years. This is very logical since the absence of social welfare, health care, and the limited number of sanitarian and health centers prevents ill people from having their medical treatments’ needs, which therefore leads to their death. However, a third indicator was included which is the infant mortality rate that has a negative relationship with the health expenditure. We can notice that Europe has the lowest rate 0.7% compared to Africa that has 6.7% mortality rate among infants. Thus, we can conclude that Europe which has the highest health expenditures has the lowest infants mortality rate because of the provision of vaccinations, and frequent followups with doctors. Whereas, in Africa, where there are a lot of diseases, there is lack of medical personnel and machinery used to assess and diagnose ill children, or infected pregnant women.
Thus, the integration of technology in health and sanitarian sector and the presence of social welfare and well-prepared medical centers proved to have a positive relationship with the health and the lifetime of people, including children.