Ghana's maternal death rate at 600 per 100,000

Women in developing countries stand a very high risk of dying from pregnancy-related problems, if appropriate attitudes are not adopted to curb the already upward trend of maternal deaths.

An estimated number of 515,000 women from developing countries die annually from conditions linked with pregnancy and childbirth. Statistics also indicate that the maternity death rate in women in developing countries is one out of 10 births as compared to one out of a 10,000 births in developed countries.

The director of Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research, Prof David Ofori-Adjei, who made these disclosures noted that developing countries record the highest in maternal deaths of which are preventable.

Speaking at the launching of the ?Initiative for Maternal Mortality Programme Assessment? (IMMPACT) in Accra on Wednesday, Prof Ofori-Adjei said Ghana?s maternal death rate stands at an estimated 590 per every 100,000 life births while that of Burkina Faso and Indonesia stand at 1,400 and 470 respectively.

According to him, an estimated 60m women undergo life-threatening complications annually, capable of leaving them with permanent disabilities. Additionally, he said an estimated 6.9m ?pre-natal? deaths related to maternal complications and two million young children become maternal orphans, a situation that threatens their survival.

Prof Ofori-Adjei further attributed the high maternal deaths to lack of inadequate information in designing effective interventions to save the lives of many women. He observed that, despite efforts at reducing maternal deaths in the country, following the coming into force of the safe motherhood initiative in 1987, data assessment on maternal deaths still remains unacceptably high.