Professor Gwyneth Lewis OBE | Why Did Mrs X Die?

About Professor Gwyneth Lewis OBE | Why Did Mrs X Die?

Every 2 minutes, somewhere in the world, a pregnant woman needlessly dies. Often her baby too. This is despite health care workers and policy makers knowing, for many years, how to prevent or treat many of the underlying problems, often at little or no extra cost.

The avoidable deaths of nearly 300,000 mothers a year represents the largest global public health inequality today. Although lessons are being learnt, and solutions put into practice, progress has been painfully slow, and, in some parts of the world, is now being reversed.

To better understand the causes of death and disability, and to describe the barriers to safe motherhood faced by mothers in low- and middle-income countries, Professor Gwyneth Lewis will use the case of Mrs X, a “universal mother”, to highlight the difficulties she might encounter in her journey though pregnancy and birth. She will show how the lessons learnt from reviewing their deaths have helped save millions of women’s lives in the past 25 years, and the significant challenges that remain.

Professor Gwyneth Lewis OBE is a retired physician and public health consultant known for her policy development, research, publications, films and advocacy for improving maternal and newborn health in the UK and globally. As well as having been the National Clinical Director for Maternity Services (Tsar) in the Department of Health she has also been a leading consultant in the World Health Organisation’s “Making Pregnancy Safer” programme. With them and their partner organisations she has worked with or in over 50 countries in all regions of the world. Her particular interest is in improving access to, and the quality of, maternity care and health outcomes through clinical and societal improvements and reducing the inequalities faced by the poorest and most vulnerable mothers in the world.