Birth in a Time of Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria
In high-income countries, maternal and infant mortality is now rare, owing to a century of health-care improvements, including the availability of antibiotics after 1934. But antibiotics have been overused, and mothers and infants in poor countries are at the highest risk from antibiotic-resistant microbes.
GENEVA/NEW YORK – King Henry VIII, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, all lost their mothers to infections following childbirth, and literature abounds with tragic stories of maternal death, from A Christmas Carol to Wuthering Heights, Far From the Madding Crowd, A Farewell to Arms, Revolutionary Road, Lolita, and Harry Potter.