What happens when a mother dies? In the West, the most obvious answer is grief – the harrowing emotional and psychological toll of losing a loved one. A mother’s death is largely viewed as a private tragedy that will grow more manageable in time.
But in many developing countries, a mother’s death is much more than an emotional crisis, often leading to long-term social and economic breakdown, both for her immediate family and for the wider community. A new, special issue of Reproductive Health (an open-access journal) focuses exclusively on the immediate and longer-term effects of maternal death on surviving children, households, and communities.