Root causes of maternal mortality: Infancy to Motherhood

Abstract

Every minute of every day a woman dies as a result of pregnancy or childbirth. The loss per annum of 500,000 women is mind boggling. A maternal death is the outcome of a chain of events and disadvantages throughout a woman's life. Every time a woman in the third world becomes pregnant, her risk of dying is 200 times higher than the risk run by a woman in the developed world.

Ten years ago in 1987, the Safe Motherhood Conference was held in Nairobi. It brought into focus the enormous inequities in the health of women. In Europe and North America, maternal mortality has reached the irreducible minimum while 99 percent of the maternal deaths occur in the developing world. The Safe Motherhood Initiative was launched, which hoped to reduce maternal mortality to half the current rate by the year 2000 AD