Burkina Faso

Burkina Faso is in west Africa, where poverty, illiteracy, economic difficulty, and traditionalism make motherhood a perilous state.

Burkina Faso's 13.3 million population is increasing at nearly 3 percent a year. Between 1996 and 2006 the increase was 341,000 per year. Education is compulsory but not enforced. In 2000, the illiteracy rate was 77 percent (66.8 male, 86.9 female).

In 2009 the first lady of Burkina Faso, Mrs. Chantal Compaoré, noted that 1,500 African women die each day, nearly half the world's maternal deaths. A Burkinabe woman and seven newborns die every three hours due to lack of adequate maternal and neonatal resources that promote prolonged labor, eclampsia, infection, and hemorrhage. Com-paoré opened the women's house in Balé in 2005 to improve the life conditions for women, ...