Achieve UN Millennium Development Goal 5: Improve Maternal Health
Channel: UNECOSOC
Date: 2011-11-27

(By UN Millennium Campaign YouTube) - This video shows how maternal mortality remains unacceptably high across much of the developing world, and it is important to improve the Millennium Development Goal 5 on maternal health. Fully achieving the Goal 5 target of reducing by three quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio remains a challenging task; it is the area of least progress among all the MDGs.

Every year, 536,000 women and girls die as a result of complications during pregnancy, childbirth or the six weeks following delivery. Almost all of these deaths (99 per cent) occur in developing countries. Maternal mortality is among the health indicators that show the greatest gap between the rich and the poor — both between countries and within them. Developed regions report nine maternal deaths per 100,000 live births compared to 450 maternal deaths in developing regions, where 14 countries have maternal mortality ratios of at least 1,000 per 100,000 live births. Half of all maternal deaths (265,000) occur in sub-Saharan Africa and another third (187,000) in Southern Asia. Together, these two regions account for 85 per cent of all maternal deaths.

According to UNICEF, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and WHO, up to 15 per cent of pregnant women in all population groups experience potentially fatal complications during birth -- 20 million women each year. More than 80 per cent of maternal deaths worldwide are due to five direct causes: hemorrhage, sepsis, unsafe abortion, obstructed labour and hypertensive disease of pregnancy. In about 21 per cent of the 500,000 maternal deaths occurring each year, women die as a result of severe bleeding. This complication can kill a woman in less than two hours; control of bleeding, replacement of blood or fast emergency evacuation is needed to save lives.

What needs to be done for the MDG 5?

- Provide sufficient financing to strengthen health systems, particularly for maternal, childcare and other reproductive health services, and ensure that procurement and distribution of contraception, drugs and equipment are functioning. 
- Establish dedicated national programmes to reduce maternal mortality and ensure universal access to reproductive health care, including family planning services. 
- Provide trained health workers during and after pregnancy and childbirth for delivery of quality antenatal care, timely emergency obstetric services and contraception.
- Ensure access to timely emergency obstetric services and provide adequate communication, skilled personnel, facilities and transportation systems, especially in areas where poverty, conflict, great distances and overloaded health systems obstruct such efforts. 
- Adopt and implement policies that protect poor families from the catastrophic consequences of unaffordable maternity care, including through access to health insurance or free services.
- Protect pregnant women from domestic violence; and involve men in maternal health and wider reproductive health. 
- Increase access to contraception and sexual and reproductive health counseling for both men, women and adolescents.
- Increase efforts to prevent child marriage and ensure that young women postpone their first pregnancy.

For more information, please visit:

UN Millennium Campaign You Tube page: http://www.youtube.com/mcampaign

Stand up and take action 2010 (17-19 September 2010): http://www.endpoverty2015.org/en/stand-up

Fact Sheet on the Millennium Development Goal 5 (http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/2008highlevel/pdf/newsroom/Goal%205%20FINAL.pdf)

We can end poverty 2015 - Millennium Development Goal 5 (http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/maternal.shtml; http://www.endpoverty2015.org/en/goals/maternal-health)