Risks Of Home Birth Loom For Women in Rural Africa Amid the Lockdowns

One of the indirect effects of the Ebola epidemic that tore through West Africa between 2014 and 2016 was the dramatic decline in access to care for pregnancy and childbirth, increasing the risk of injury or death among expectant mothers across the affected zone.

Now experts worry the novel coronavirus could have the same effect in poor countries around the world, worsening a global maternal mortality rate the World Health Organization has described as "unacceptably high."

In a study published in May in the Lancet Global Health, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health said the spillover effects of Covid-19 could result in an additional 56,700 maternal deaths over the next six months in 118 low- and middle-income countries.

Even in the best of times, these countries account for an estimated 94 percent of the 295,000 maternal deaths recorded annually worldwide, the bulk of them in sub-Saharan Africa. The leading cause of those deaths is what's known as postpartum hemorrhage, or excessive blood loss after the birth of a baby. And that's driven in large part by the fact that, a , millions of women still deliver (or ), many of them with .