UNICEF highlights maternal mortality on women's day

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) marked International Women's Day on Friday by highlighting the particular need for a global commitment to reducing maternal mortality. "Every minute a woman dies while pregnant or giving birth," the agency said in a press statement, in which it made a general call on the world to do more to prevent maternal mortality - one of the few measures of human progress to have remained virtually unchanged since 1990. "It is unacceptable that, in the year 2002, so many women die in the basic act of giving life," said UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy. "We must commit ourselves to addressing this fundamental aspect of the gender gap: keeping prospective mothers healthy and alive." Maternal mortality ratios vary widely between the developed and developing world - demonstrating that, with proper attention and investment, women's lives can be preserved. While a woman who gives birth in a developing country faces a chance of dying that is sometimes as high as one in 13, that risk falls to one in 4,100 in developed, industrialised countries, according to UNICEF. In Uganda, for instance, the number of deaths from pregnancy-related causes had risen to new heights - largely as a result of inadequate access to antenatal care, the UN agency noted in a recent appeal document. The majority of women who died in childbirth had never attended an antenatal clinic, and only about 38 percent of births were attended by skilled health staff, it said. Women and children - especially refugees and internally displaced persons - bore the weight of much of the poverty in Uganda, with particularly poor access to health services, compounded by insecurity in parts of the country, and by gender inequality, the document stated. Women in developing countries continue to die during pregnancy and childbirth mainly because of low social status and powerlessness, according to UNICEF. These factors limit women's access to basic education and basic health care, without which they have difficulty getting access to adequate health information to enable them make the best decisions on child-bearing, health and nutrition. It was estimated that over half a million women died every year as a result of pregnancy and childbirth - and more than 99 per cent of these deaths occurred in the developing world, the agency stated on Friday. "We know how to prevent most of these deaths. Political commitment, and the resources that follow, have just not developed on this issue," Bellamy said. "We have to see that as part of a broader tableau of discrimination against women. And it must come to an end." Investment was certainly needed, but the focus must be on the right of women to have these basic maternal health services, according to the UNICEF executive. "It is simply unjust that in a world that has entered a new millennium with unprecedented technological breakthroughs that we allow so many women to die such easily preventable deaths," she added.