Supporting safe motherhood : a review of financial trends : summary

An estimated 500,000 women, 99 percent of them from the developing world, die each year from pregnancy-related causes. About three quarters of these deaths are the direct result of obstetrical complications -- hemorrhage, infection, toxemia, obstructed labor, and abortion (under primitive and illegal conditions). An estimated equivalent number of infants do not survive their mother's death. For surviving mothers, the consequences of pregnancy have a severe impact on health and family economics. The strategy for safe motherhood is based on two approaches. First, the encouragement of activities that indirectly improve maternal health. These include education, policies to improve women's rights and working conditions, health care and nutrition, transportation and communication systems, water and sanitation facilities, and increases in family income and food production. The second approach targets activities to reduce maternal deaths. These activities include reducing unwanted pregnancies through the provision of family planning services, and through national policies that recognize the importance of this issue. A second objective is to reduce the risks of pregnancy through providing community-based family planning and prenatal services to identify high-risk cases'adequate referral services for the complications of pregnancy, and communication and transport systems to support patient referral procedures.