Let's say a pregnant woman develops high blood pressure.
In ordinary circumstances, her medical team will monitor her condition. If there's a threat to the fetus, the doctor might want to bring on labor early. In the end, mother and baby are usually fine.
But what if she's living in a war zone?
First of all, she might not know she has the condition. Sometimes a pregnant woman with high blood pressure shows no symptoms. And amidst the chaos of combat, regular checkups may be hard to arrange.
Even if she is aware of complications, like swelling of the hands, feet and face, she still might not be able to get to a hospital equipped with blood-pressure cuffs and doctors with the right expertise.
"Nobody wants to drive through the streets because it is too dangerous," says Dr. Andrew Weeks, an obstetrician and expert on maternal deaths who published a chilling editorial about the risks of war for pregnant women in the journal The BMJ. "There are no taxis. There's no money. So you start walking or being carried to the nearest health facility, which is in ruins. Of course you're going to die. You haven't got a chance."
And it's not just a lack of medical care, he says. Direct attacks on pregnant women are another concern. In his editorial, Weeks described women being shot while giving birth in Nigeria and a fetus being shot through a pregnant woman's belly by a sniper in Syria.
Without any official tracking of the number of pregnant women who die from reasons related to war, these women often become "forgotten victims," says Weeks.
[For more of this story, written by Emily Sohn, go to http://www.npr.org/sections/go...otten-victims-of-war]
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