Inequities: Maternal mortality

"Territory size shows the proportion of deaths of women worldwide while pregnant or within 6 weeks of pregnancy and partly due to it, that occur there. "

UNICEF Chief of Health Dr. Peter Salama on maternal mortality:

It’s really an unconscionable number of deaths. It’s a human tragedy on a massive scale.

Some chillling statistics a new UNICEF report on maternal and newborn health, via a BBC news piece:

• Women in poor nations are 300 times more likely to die in childbirth or from pregnancy complications than those in the developed world.
• About 99% of the 500,000 maternal deaths in 2005 occurred outside industrialised nations, more than half of them in Africa.
• In Niger, the country with the world’s highest maternal mortality, a woman has a one in seven chance of dying, during pregnancy or childbirth.

Check out the full report here.