h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It's national charity week here in Denmark. We'll collect money for people in third world countries. This years theme is "When Mum is Missing". In the radio and in particular on tv you will hear celebrities tell how much it means to have a mother and what you will miss out on if you don't have one.

151 million kids worldwide have lost one or both parents. The number of kids who grow up on the street, in institutions or are fugitives without parents is even higher. Significantly higher.

- Yeah, okay, but what about fathers? Why only be occupied with mothers?

Because men don't die of birth-related complications. But 287.000 women do. Every year. 99 percent of them in the third world.

And because dieing mothers leave most of this world's orphants.

That's why.

The "Music Aid" this year had as a theme "every woman should survive their pregnancy". About the same.

"And because dieing mothers leave most of this world's orphants."

Is that because the fathers are dead as well? Oscar Wilde's famous quip was "Losing one parent is a tragedy. Losing both seems like carelessness."

Dying mothers are like dyeing mothers but without the shampoo and the hair rinse.

It's bad enough to be abandoned without parents, but in war-torn areas like Afghanistan a third menace is possible: missing limbs as well as parents.

A century or two back, women in First-World countries also faced high risks of death in childbirth. A century before that, there was also the danger that the mother of the house might reach into the oven in back of the fireplace and have her long sleeves catch fire, often with fatal results.

I don't know what solutions can be found for modern deaths in childbirth. Women vary widely in their ability to deliver children. Think of Jacob, who had four wives [not an uncommon arrangement in his day]. One wife gave birth to 11 children and lived long enough to raise most of them. Another wife nearly died just delivering one.

Caesarian section has been used more and more often in recent times. It is thought that Caius Julius Caesar's mother, for which the practice was named, probably did not use it. Why not? She would not have survived the operation. It is known that she lived many years after birthing him.

I think one of the problems is that many third world women (girls) get married off young, and because they're not fully developed yet, the child often gets stuck in the birth canal. Which in the better cases leads to fistulas. In the worse cases, the baby dies in the canal, and the mother dies because of carrying a dead child inside her.

Without access to even minimal healthcare, this happens a lot.

Teenage pregnancies certainly contribute heavily to the statistics

But appalling lack of hygiene is also a major factor

Which is why some of the charity will be used to buy sterile plastic gloves and other equipment - plus educating people how to avoid pregnancies