Why are mothers still dying in childbirth?

More than 500,000 women die in pregnancy or childbirth every year in the developing world due to lack of proper care, report Rebecca Seal and Katrina Manson.Rebecca Seal and Katrina Manson The Observer, Sunday September 28 2008, Guardian, UK

It is one of the world's greatest hidden epidemics, but the search for a solution is hopelessly underfunded. On average, every minute of every day a woman somewhere dies in childbirth or pregnancy, the overwhelming majority in developing countries.

It is estimated that they number more than half a million every year, in what Norway's Prime Minister, Jens Stoltenberg, told the United Nations last week was 'the biggest expression of brutality to women I can imagine'.

One of the UN's eight Millennium Development Goals in 2000 was to reduce the ratio of maternal mortality - the number of mothers who die per 100,000 - recorded over the period 1990-2015 by three quarters. But as the 2015 target date gets ever closer, it has become clear that attempts to lower the death toll have failed.

Even as Sarah Brown, wife of the British Prime Minister, became a patron last week of the campaign to reduce deaths in childbirth, Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organisation, was conceding how little had been achieved. 'Despite two decades of efforts,' she said, 'the world failed to make a dent.' .....

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