"Illiteracy, poverty, and ignorance"

That was the response of one of the villagers who we went to interview for a household survey that I was sent to Nigeria to help with. We had asked him why he thought maternal mortality rates were so high in the area, and he couldn't have been more right (And yeah, talk about going a long way to get a lecture on the fundamental determinants of health. So much for my pricey graduate school education, hah!).

In Nigeria overall, unfortunately, about 100 out of 100,000 women who give birth end up dying. In the US, this rate is about 10. In the northern region, this number balloons to an absurd 1000. Reasons for this vary, but women have no rights, they end up getting married as young as 12 or 13, and most give birth in the village instead of a hospital facility. Family planning is considered by many to be a bad word. So what to do?

That's one of the aspects of the project that I like. There aren't any quick and easy fixes, and any solutions will have to be developed with the communities and the Nigerian medical students and researchers that are leading this project. But the villager was right, illiteracy, poverty, and ignorance all have to be addressed to make any progress.