Progress too slow on maternal health in region, says MDG report

The December 2005 issue of the Journal is out!

Each year across the region around one quarter of a million mothers die as a result of pregnancy and childbirth. Almost all these deaths can be avoided if mothers have access to emergency obstetric care.
According to a report published by the Asian Development Bank, United Nations Development Programme and Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), progress has been far too slow in Asia-Pacific regarding Goal 5 of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs); improve maternal health. Some 28 countries are viewed as off-track in meeting this Goal; the largest number for a Goal in the region.
Under Goal 5, the target is to reduce the maternal mortality ratio by three quarters between 1990 and 2015. In the average Asian developing country the ratio has only declined from 395 to 342 according to the report, A Future Within Reach: Reshaping Institutions in a Region of Disparities to Meet the Millennium Development Goals in Asia and the Pacific. Even more alarming, of the 42 countries for which data are available, maternal mortality has gone up in 22. The highest maternal mortality ratio per 100,000 live births are in Afghanistan (1,900), Nepal (740), Timor-Leste (660) and Pakistan (500), the report says.
The report also cites the case of Bangladesh, which is on track to meet this particular target and has done so at least partly because it has been able to bring care closer to mothers in rural communities. Currently only 14 per cent of births are attended by skilled personnel but between 1992 and 2002 Bangladesh increased the number of emergency obstetric care centres from 30 to 127, it says.
Providing a status report for the region on progress towards achieving the eight Goals, the report argues that the region has made rapid progress towards many of the MDGs. But not all the developing countries in Asia and the Pacific are making sufficient progress; none are currently on track to meet all the Goals by 2015, the report says.
It emphasizes that many countries should be able to achieve many of the Goals if they invest sufficient resources and make appropriate institutional changes – in particular reforming the way they deliver public services to reach their poorest and most marginalized citizens.
Launching the report in Manila in September 2005, Mr. Kim Hak-Su, Executive Secretary of ESCAP said: “To achieve the MDGs, the key challenge is to tackle the region’s growing disparity by extending the benefits of the region’s economic success and prosperity to its 680 million poor. This is the real battle we will have to fight in Asia-Pacific”.
Note: The report is available at http://www.mdgasiapacific.org/