With the media paying so much attention to the casualties of the economic slowdown, it would be easy to overlook a vital report on the grave situation faced by the world's two most vulnerable classes of citizens — women and children in impoverished countries.
The "State of the World's Children 2009," released by the United Nations' Children's Fund (UNICEF) last month, focuses on maternal and newborn health, emphasizing the link between the health of mothers and their newborns, and offering solutions to close the gap in childbirth-related deaths between rich and poor countries. Pregnancy and childbirth are all too often marred by tragedy in the developing world.
The report's statistics on maternal mortality are sobering: UNICEF estimates that since 1990, 500,000 maternal deaths have occurred annually — nearly 10 million deaths in the past 19 years — with the vast majority of these fatalities taking place in developing regions. Based on 2005 data, the latest available, the average lifetime risk of a woman in a least developed country dying of complications from pregnancy or childbirth is more than 300 times that of her counterpart in an industrialized country. Millions more suffer from pregnancy-related injuries, infections, diseases and disabilities.