BANGKOK: It seemed a simple statement: women should not die from complications related to pregnancy or childbirth. Yet two years after world leaders agreed to 17 global goals at the United Nations, including the childbirth target, countries in Asia Pacific are grappling to twin the rhetoric with social, cultural and political realities.
An estimated 85,000 mothers died in 2015 from childbirth in the region, home to more than half of the world’s population and some of its fastest growing economies, UN figures show, with the maternal mortality rate seen as a key way to measure improvement in a nation’s health.
These deaths accounted for 28 percent of the global total, translating into a maternal mortality ratio (MMR) of 127 deaths per 100,000 live births, according to the UN agency for population UNFPA, which released its latest State of the World Population Report on Tuesday.
Up to 90 percent of these deaths occur in 12 countries, according to UNFPA whose officials have calculated which are likely to meet the global target of reducing its MMR to below 70 deaths per 100,000 live births by 2030. Bangladesh, Laos, East Timor and Indonesia are seen as likely to meet the deadline.
But Afghanistan, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Myanmar, India, Cambodia and the Philippines, are seen as failing to reach the target by varying degrees. Reducing maternal deaths requires political will, government foresight and access to family planning, according to campaigners.
"This is an issue that’s still too often seen as medical, and strictly related to women’s life. It’s not," Federica Maurizio, a sexual health and reproductive rights expert at UNFPA in Bangkok, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "Maternal health ...is one of the key indicators that really tells you how much the health system in a country is able to provide for the people.
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