One woman dies every minute from causes related to pregnancy and childbirth.
Thousands more suffer temporary or permanent disabilities.
Much of this is due to poverty. In many countries basic health services do not exist, often because of cuts made by governments trying to impose structural-adjustment programs. At the end of 1997 there were nearly 6 billion people in the world. The UN's medium projection for 2025 puts the figure at 8.04 billion and for 2050, 9.37 billion. A person in the North consumes 8 times as much energy as someone from the South and 1.3 billion people in the developing world live on less than a dollar a day.