Geneva, Switzerland.- A woman dies every two minutes in the world during childbirth or from complications related to pregnancy, although maternal mortality has been reduced by a third in the last two decades, the United Nations warned Thursday.
Pregnancy remains “an extremely dangerous experience for millions of people around the world who do not have access to respectful and good-quality health services,” lamented the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
The UN agency, which wrote the report, revealed that 287,000 women died during pregnancy or childbirth in 2020, that is, one every two minutes. In 2000, there were 446 thousand.
But this is only a slight decrease compared to the 309,000 deaths registered in 2016, when the UN Sustainable Development Goals came into force.
Although the report highlights the progress made in reducing the number of deaths between 2000 and 2015, it warns that since then, achievements have stalled. In some cases they have even gone backwards.
Globally, the maternal mortality rate fell by 34.3 percent between 2000 and 2020. This rate represents the number of maternal deaths per 100,000 live births.
In this period, the country that registered the largest decrease was Belarus, with one maternal death for every 100,000 births in 2020 against 24 in 2000.
On the opposite side is Venezuela, with 259 maternal deaths for every 100,000 births in 2020 against 92 in 2000, that is, an increase of 182.8 percent in the maternal mortality rate.
The statistics “show the urgent need to guarantee for every woman and every girl access to essential health services before, during and after childbirth and the possibility of fully exercising their reproductive rights,” Tedros emphasized.
The number of deaths has increased or stagnated in almost all regions of the world in recent years, with the exception of Australia, New Zealand and Central and South Asia.
Shortage of 900 thousand midwives
In two of the eight United Nations regions, the maternal mortality rate even increased between 2016 and 2020, by 17 percent and 15 percent respectively. Most of the deaths are in the poorest regions of the world and in countries in conflict.
In 2020, about 70 percent of deaths occurred in sub-Saharan Africa, where the death rate is “136 times higher than Australia or New Zealand,” with the lowest numbers, the report’s author said. Dr. Jenny Cresswell, at a press conference.
In nine countries experiencing severe humanitarian crises (Yemen, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, Chad, Sudan and Afghanistan), the maternal mortality rate was twice the global average.
The main causes of these deaths are acute bleeding, high blood pressure, pregnancy-related infections, complications from abortions performed in unsafe settings, and underlying conditions that may worsen with pregnancy (such as HIV/AIDS and malaria). .
All these causes can be prevented and treated, insists the WHO, which also stresses the importance of prenatal care and postnatal care. The UN agency also considers that it is “key” for women to control their reproductive health.
“We can and must do better by investing urgently in family planning and covering the global shortfall of 900,000 midwives,” said the executive director of the United Nations Fund for Population, Dr. Natalia Kanem, in a statement.
According to WHO’s Dr. Anshu Banerjee, the post-2020 statistics, which have not yet been published, do not bode well due to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and the economic crisis.
