The UN Millennium Goal 5 Report

The report was presented by Liinu Koivisto, Charlotta Lohilahti and Laura Lalli

Goal 5: Improve Maternal Health - Where do we stand?
• Maternal mortality remains unacceptably high.
• New information shows signs of progress in improving the health of women during pregnancy and childbirth. -> In some countries, maternal mortality rations have significantly declined
• We are still far from achieving the MDG target of reducing the maternal mortality ration by three quarters by 2015.
-> We need 5.5 per cent annual decline to meet the goal.
• Funding is vital to meet the goal, yet both official and external funding have declined sharply. -> There is now less money available than there was in 2000.
• Progress has been made in…
- sub-Saharan Africa: some countries have maternal mortality levels between 1990 and 2008.
- Asia and Northern Africa have made even greater improvements.
• Antenatal care and skilled assistance during delivery are being offered to more women.
-> Progress is being made in all regions.
-> In North Africa, more and more women are seeing skilled health worker at least once during their pregnancy (% gone up by 70 per cent).
-> In Asia: increases of almost 50%.
-> In 2008, health workers attended 63 % of births in the developing world (in 1990, the percentage was 53%).
-> Most dramatic progress in Northern Africa and South-Eastern Asia (increases of 74 per cent and 63 per cent).
• Still, large disparities exist.
-> Poor women in remote areas are most likely to remain without adequate care.
-> Especially true for areas where there are only a small number of skilled health workers and maternal mortality is high (sub-Saharan Africa, Southern Asia, Oceania).
-> HIV is also slowing the progress.
• Contraceptive use has increased over the last decade.
-> by 2007, 62 per cent of women (married or in union) were using some form of contraceptive.
* Increases lower than in the 1990s.
• Providing contraception to all in need could cut maternal mortality by almost a third.
- Widening access to maternal health services in Egypt: construction of maternal homes in rural areas, trained healthcare workers attending births.
- Fighting fistula in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and the Arab States: launching the Campaign to End Fistula, a childbirth injury that leaves women incontinent, isolated and ashamed.
• Investing in mobile maternal health units in Pakistan: UNFPA-supported mobile clinics were set up in 2005.
-> Nearly 850,000 patients by 2008.