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Maternal mortality down in the region

Published:Thursday | May 8, 2014 | 12:00 AM
In this May 2013 photo, a Rohingya woman breastfeeds her child in Sittwe, western Rakhine state, Myanmar. Violence forced hundreds of foreign aid workers out of Rakhine state leaving people with little access to life-saving medical care, many of them pregnant women experiencing complications that could have been prevented.

GENEVA (CMC):

New United Nations data show that Barbados and Haiti are among 11 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean that have made significant progress in reducing deaths from pregnancy-related causes since 1990.

The new report indicates that the maternal mortality ratio (MMR) in the 11 countries has been reduced by 40 per cent or more since 1990.

Besides Barbados and Haiti, the other countries are Bolivia, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Peru.

The report, however, says that no country in the region is on track to meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of reducing maternal mortality 75 per cent by 2015.

Despite this progress, it said an estimated 9,300 women lost their lives in Latin America and the Caribbean owing to pregnancy-related causes in 2013, down from 17,000 maternal deaths in 1990.

The new report titled Trends in Maternal Mortality Estimates 1990 to 2013 estimates changes in maternal mortality worldwide and by region and country.

It was produced jointly by the World Health Organisation, UNICEF, the United Nations Population Fund, the World Bank, and the United Nations Population Division.

The report found that, in Latin America and the Caribbean, maternal mortality declined an average 40 per cent between 1990 and 2013, less than the global average and short of the 75 per cent MDG target for 2015.

Low rates

However, the region's overall MMR of 85 deaths per 100,000 live births is considered "low", less than 100 among developing regions.

"We have seen progress in saving mothers' lives in the Americas, and we welcome that," said Suzanne Serruya, director of the Latin American Center for Perinatology/Women's and Reproductive Health, a Pan American Health Organization technical centre.

PAHO said, globally, maternal deaths have declined 45 per cent since 1990. It said that an estimated 289,000 women died worldwide in 2013, owing to complications in pregnancy and childbirth, down from 523,000 in 1990.