by Marge Berer

Editor Reproductive Health Matters

Thanks to the Millennium Development Goals and much work on the part of the UN, WHO, many governments and NGOs globally and nationally, the press and media are now highly attuned to what is happening as regards maternal mortality. An announcement by WHO on behalf of the United Nations of the latest global estimates, published in May 2012, showed that the trend in maternal deaths appears to be falling overall, and resulted in many newspaper articles sharing this very good news. The global data were as follows:

• The number of women dying due to complications of pregnancy, childbirth and unsafe abortion decreased from 543,000 in 1990 to 358,000 in 2008, and 287,000 in 2010.

This excellent news masks the fact that there has been a lot of change in some countries and virtually none in others. Here are some of the details of those differences, taken from the report:

• Deaths are falling quickly in East Asia but the reduction is attributed largely to China.
• Southern African countries have seen the beginnings of a reversal, but sub-Saharan Africa (56%) and southern Asia (29%) accounted for 85% of the global burden in 2010.
• India (19%) and Nigeria (14%) alone accounted for a third of deaths globally.
• 40 countries (20 % of the total number of countries) still have maternal mortality ratios greater than 300 deaths per 100,000 live births.
• Countries with the highest maternal mortality ratios were: Chad, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Central African Republic, Burundi, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Sudan, Cameroon, and Nigeria; Lao PDR, Afghanistan, Haiti, Timor-Leste – these are among the world’s poorest countries, many of which are also sites of conflict, war and other crisis situations, such as earthquakes and flooding.

In other words, many countries still have very high maternal mortality ratios, including two very large countries, which account for a large proportion of deaths. Moreover, there is a growing gap between countries where improvements have taken place and many of the poorest countries, where most women are still simply not benefiting. Furthermore, as the May 2012 edition of RHM shows, there are differences within countries and between women (according to socioeconomic status, rural vs urban status, age and marital status) that are sometimes great and must not be ignored. The paper by Shah and Ahman, for example, shows that unsafe abortion deaths remain high in many countries and that young women are at the greatest risk of death and complications from unsafe abortion. A study in Nigeria shows that women in northern Nigeria are at far greater risk of maternal death than women in the south of the country. Given that the primary aim of the Millennium Development Goals is to reduce poverty and the consequences of poverty, celebration is perhaps not yet in order. However, countries where improvements have clearly taken place, such as Rwanda and Cambodia, as shown in other RHM papers, certainly deserve credit for enormous efforts.