Maternal Mortality Drops Dramatically
22 April 2010
For the first time in decades, researchers are reporting that there has been a significant drop in maternal mortality. This is fantastic news as these findings challenge the broadly held view that maternal health is an unsolvable problem that remains defiant to all efforts to affect change.
According to a paper published in the Lancet medical journal, maternal deaths have fallen from around 526,000 in 1980 to around 343,000 in 2008.
The study suggested a number of reasons for the improvement, including:
- a fall in pregnancy rates, particularly in east Asia;
- rising incomes in a number of regions, which amongst other things, improves access to health care and nutrition;
- higher levels of education amongst women of child bearing age; and
- an increase in direct interventions such as skilled birth attendants.
The study also highlights the fact that the reduction would have been greater still, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, if it were not for the onset of the HIV epidemic.
Sine 2007, Catalyst groups (Baptist World Aid Australia's Advocacy program) have joined the Micah Challenge to lobby the Australian Government to increase aid funding in areas that are known to have an impact on maternal mortality. As a result the government allocated an extra $500 million to education and an extra $160 million to basic health care in the aid budget last year. This study is evidence that these efforts have been effective in saving the lives of mothers the world over.
The fifth Millennium Development Goal seeks to reduce by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio (the proportion of women dying during or shortly after pregnancy). The study concludes that while substantial progress has been made to achieve MDG 5, current efforts need to be dramatically scaled up. To get to a three-quarter drop in maternal deaths by 2015 the rate needs to rise from the present 1.4% reduction each year to 5.5%. The study demonstrates that there are ways to achieve this goal, but the resources need to be made available to make it happen. It is for this reason that Catalyst groups continue to join the Micah Challenge in calling on the government to double aid to health care.
View the original study
New York Times report from 14/4/2010
