ABSTRACT
Pre-eclampsia is the elevated blood pressure and excess protein in the urine after 20 weeks of pregnancy in a woman who previously had normal blood pressure, a major cause of preterm birth and an early marker for future cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. The objective of study is to identify the level of awareness regarding pre-eclampsia [pregnancy induced hypertension or gestational hypertension] and its relation with increasing maternal and fetal mortality rate. The questionnaire based survey was conducted including both close and open ended questions and compared with the retrospective data among 160 respondents, in which our target was to investigate women of varying socioeconomic status and the duration of our research is almost 20 days. Statistically we found an overall poor awareness of pre-eclampsia with 26% of women surveyed having heard of it and remaining 74% were unknown to pre-eclampsia, 39% faced pre-eclampsia with its severe consequences and fetal mortality rate data showed 42% deaths stating pre-eclampsia as the major cause of it, in addition to that higher rate of maternal death i.e. 57% occurs due to pre-eclampsia subsiding other reasons as key reasons of maternal mortality. Hence it is concluded that Pre-eclampsia is a disorder of pregnancy with unknown etiology so awareness level is too low to decrease its incident and this lack of awareness translates to worse health outcomes proving pre-eclampsia as a major cause of maternal and fetal mortality and its lack of awareness increasing this risk day by day and making it a hidden threat to pregnancy