Developments in Brief : World Bank to Focus on Maternal Deaths

The World Bank next week plans to announce funding for projects in developing countries to reduce the high death rates among pregnant women, which are 50 to 200 times greater than in the developed world.

The current estimate of 500,000 annual maternal deaths could be cut at least in half within a decade by simply strengthening basic health services, said Barbara Herz, a World Bank adviser.

She said one focus will be on programs to reduce the most common causes of death at childbirth--such as hemorrhaging, infection and high blood pressure--by relying on non-physician health workers to identify pregnant women who are at high risk. Herz said the World Bank will announce at a “safe motherhood” meeting in Nairobi that it will substantially increase its funding of such health programs.

A spokesman for the World Health Organization said the disparity between maternal mortality rates in Third World nations and in developed countries is “greater even than the infant mortality rate,” generally considered a telling health index.

According to the World Health Organization, mortality rates per 100,000 live births are approximately 640 in Africa, 270 in Latin America, 420 in Asia and 30 in the developed world as a whole.