Goal #5Maternal Health
Introduction
Many people consider the day their child was born the happiest day in their life. In the world's wealthier countries, that is. In poorer countries, the day a child born is all too often the day its mother dies. The lifetime risk of dying in pregnancy and childbirth in Africa is 1 in 22, while it is 1 in 120 in Asia and 1 in 7,300 in developed countries.
The Targets
Goal 5 of the Millennium Development Goals sets out by the year 2015 to:
- Reduce by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio.
- Achieve, by 2015, universal access to reproductive health.
Did You Know?
More than half a million women die in pregnancy and childbirth every year - that's one death every minute. Of these deaths, 99 per cent are in developing countries. The lifetime risk of dying in pregnancy and childbirth in Africa is 1 in 22, while it is 1 in 120 in Asia and 1 in 7,300 in developed countries.(Source:UNFPA)
Achieving the Goals
In the mid-1990s, the Honduran government adopted a four point plan to fight maternal deaths. The nation also initiated a monitoring system to determine the cause of death in all recorded maternal mortality cases. Five years later, Honduras had reduced its maternal mortality rate by half.
Goal News
Portuguese actress and TV presenter Catarina Furtado is UNFPA ambassador. After travelling extensively through Africa, Catarina has always found “deep injustice and social inequalities”. Guinea-Bissau is the country that, in her view, best represents “total injustice” – and it’s precisely in that country that she is currently contributing for a project on child mortality and maternal health.
The number one killer of young women in the developing world is not a disease whose cure eludes us, or a condition which the world lacks the resources to treat. It is pregnancy and childbirth.
Every year, 500,000 women die while trying to give life. That’s one every single minute.
Nairobi, 07.01.09: Kenyan anti-poverty campaigners have launched the “Piga Debe for Women Rights Campaign” at a well attended concert held at the Carnivore grounds in Nairobi as part of mobilization for the International women’s day.
“Piga Debe” in Kiswahili means “make a big noise” and draws its inspiration from women’s voices in Africa who have repeatedly shouted over the years that “Enough is enough, no more deaths in childbirth”.
March 6, 2009 –"I have been campaigning on the issue of maternal mortality for quite some time now. But last week, it hit me directly: My sister, Asmau, age 33, died in Nigeria, two hours after delivering her second child, a boy who she never held. Asmau was not an illiterate woman. She was a senior science teacher, and her husband is a college principal."
This experience of Dr. Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem, Deputy Director of the UN Millennium Campaign, sums up the sheer desperation and outrage experienced by many families who lose their loved ones needlessly during childbirth.
The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health has called on G8 leaders to fulfil their previous commitments to global health and commit to new, long-term financing for essential interventions that could avert the deaths of over 6 million mothers, newborns and children every year.
