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, between 1990 and 2015, 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
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.
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.
CAPE TOWN – Leading global health experts, policy-makers and parliamentarians convened in Cape Town last week to address the urgent need for accelerated progress to reduce maternal, newborn and child deaths, if internationally-agreed targets are to be met.
A new World Bank-IMF report warns that most countries will fall short on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a set of eight globally agreed development goals with a due date of 2015.
Though much of the world is set to cut extreme poverty in half by then, prospects are gravest for the goals of reducing child and maternal mortality. Serious shortfalls also likely in primary school completion, nutrition, and sanitation goals.
