One-third of the total deaths during pregnancy and childbirth in 2015 happened in India and Nigeria even as the total number of global maternal deaths has almost halved since 1990, a Lancet report revealed.
Worldwide, the annual number of maternal deaths per 100,000 live births fell by 44% between 1990 and 2015, from approximately 385 to 216. The sub-Saharan African region accounted for an estimated 66% (201,000) of global maternal deaths, followed by southern Asia at 22% (66,000 deaths).
Basically, only 5% of the world’s countries accounted for over half of maternal deaths. Nigeria with 58,000 deaths accounted for 19% and India at 45,000 deaths, accounted for 15% of the total deaths, according to the report—a series of six papers by an international team of researchers.
One of Nigeria’s millennium development goals (MDG) was to improve maternal health.
Nigeria had previously claimed to have met its target, and made strong progress on other indicators. According to the MDG mandate, Nigeria has seen improvements in maternal health. With a baseline figure of 1000 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1990, the Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) consistently decreased over the years to 545 in 2008. The downward trend continued to 350 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2012 and subsequently to its end-point status of 243 per 100,000 live births in 2014.
But the new figures in the new report show a sharp contrast to previous recordings.
Nigeria had also previously claimed that the proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel improved appreciably from a baseline figure of 45% in 1990 to the end-point status of 58.6% in 2014 with the conviction that the national figure would have been better had it not been for the wide disparities across states with lower records.
A key strategy for reducing maternal mortality is to ensure that every birth occurred with the assistance of a doctor, nurse, or midwife.
The report also said that globally, cesarean section rates are rising in nearly every country and region,with 40.5% of all births being by cesarean section in Latin America and the Caribbean, and increases in some low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
