Mothers in peril
Every 90 seconds, a mother dies in pregnancy or of childbirth complications — a tragic statistic, but one that may drive efforts to improve health care in developing countries, experts gathered at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) said Friday. Protecting women in childbirth remains one of the world’s biggest and most intractable health problems, HSPH Dean Julio Frenk said at The Forum at Harvard School of Public Health. Of the United Nations’ eight Millennium Development Goals, reducing maternal mortality has proven the most difficult to make progress on. Progress has been slow not for technical reasons. Developed countries discovered long ago the interventions that save the lives of mothers. Instead, it has been difficult because the women dying overwhelmingly live in the world’s poorest nations, with little access to the facilities, procedures, and expertise that could save them. Ninety-nine percent of maternal deaths are in developing countries. Ninety percent could...