WUNRN
Maternal Mortality Goals Hit by Funds
Crunch
Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Nov 23 (IPS) - A scarcity of funds and a failure to
translate national laws into action are undermining hopes of the world meeting a
key development goal in 2015 that aims to help women, says a ranking U.N.
official.
The fifth Millennium Development Goal (MDG) ''will not be
reached in many countries because of a lack of implementation of national laws
and a lack of resources to fund programmes the laws call for,'' Thoraya Obaid,
head of the United Nations Populations Fund (UNFPA), said in an IPS interview.
This goal -- to reduce by three-quarters the maternal mortality ratio,
given the estimates that over half a million women die every year during
pregnancy or childbirth -- is one of eight targets the world's nations pledged
to meet at a U.N. summit in 2000.. The other goals, set with the 2015 deadline
in mind, include eradicating poverty by halving the number of people living on
less then one U.S. dollar a day, eliminating gender disparities, reducing child
mortality by two-thirds and halting the spread of killer diseases, like
HIV/AIDS.
As significant to the looming failure of the fifth MDG was the
slow progress among developing countries to implement laws that guarantee
maternal health care and reproductive health rights, said Obaid on the sidelines
of a conference here on population and development goals attended by 180
parliamentarians from 103 countries. 'If there were laws, we can hold
governments accountable. But if there were no laws you cannot hold them to
anything.''
The findings of global survey released during the meeting,
which ran from Nov. 20-22, revealed that 250 laws addressing concerns such as
gender-based violence, empowerment of women and support for reproductive health
had been passed in 77 countries, a figure well below the half the number of
nations at the U.N., 192.
Obaid also faulted the developed nations for
failing to meet their share of the commitment made at a major population
conference in the mid-1990s to fund sexual and reproductive health programmes in
the developing world through their overseas development aid (ODA) programmes.
'Within ODA, the commitment for sexual reproductive health from the donors side
has not reached the one-third level that was supposed to be met,'' she said.
Such limited funding of maternal health care programmes was not lost on
the participants at the Bangkok event, the 2006 International Parliamentarians'
Conference, the third such global event since 2002, to review the progress since
the 1994 International Conference of Population and Development (ICPD), held in
Cairo.
'Funding for family planning, the first line of defence against
maternal mortality, has dropped from 55 per cent of total population funding in
1995 to 9 percent today,'' noted the Bangkok Statement of Commitment,' released
at the end of the conference. 'And funds for reproductive health commodities
remain in short supply.''
One reason behind that, participants at the
conference conceded, was the shift in funding to deal with the killer disease
HIV/AIDS over the past decade. 'Funds for the treatment of AIDS has grown
exponentially, while funds for its prevention remain scarce,'' adds the final
declaration. 'As a result, statistics on maternal mortality and morbidity
remain virtually unchanged in some regions of the world, while statistic on HIV
and AIDS reflect only slow change.''
'No one should die as a result of
sex, denial of accurate information or the lack of a condom, or a single
birthing kit,'' Gill Greer, director-general of the International Planned
Parenthood Federation, said in her keynote speech to the conference, which shed
light on the alarming death rates due to inadequate maternal health care, unsafe
abortion and the absence of HIV prevention services.
'In Niger the
lifetime risk of dying from complications in pregnancy or childbirth is one in
seven, in Sweden one in 29,800,'' she added. 'However, we do not know the
actual survival status of some 36 million women who give birth each year in
countries which do not officially count maternal deaths.''
World Bank
estimates show that 74 percent of maternal deaths could be prevented if 'all
women had access to interventions to address complications of pregnancy and
childbirth,'' she revealed. 'Yet some 200 million women a year are not
accessing the contraception they desire or need in order to space or prevent
pregnancies.''
The countries in the Asia-Pacific region offer a window
into this problem, noted a publication released this week by the Economic and
Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), a regional U.N.-body based
in Bangkok. 'Among all reproductive health indicators, perhaps the least
progress has been made in reducing levels of maternal mortality,'' writes Philip
Guest in the Asia-Pacific Population Journal.' 'Even in countries such as
Malaysia, which is recognised as having a reliable vital registration system,
maternal deaths have been shown to be under-reported by a large amount.''
According to World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates in 2004, there
were close to 253,000 maternal deaths a year across Asia, of which South-central
Asia had the highest rates, 207,000 annual deaths.
'A significant
contributor to maternal mortality is unsafe abortion,'' adds Guest of the
Population Council, an international public health non-governmental group. 'Of
the total estimated number of unsafe abortions (10.5 million in Asia in 2000),
over seven million occurred in South-central Asia.''
As a key Thai
participant at the conference admitted, getting governments interested in
population and maternal health issues are not as easy as seeking political
support for more visible development initiatives. 'This issue is difficult to
convince governments, unlike telling them about the need to build a road,'' says
Malinee Sukavejworakit, secretary-general of the Asian Forum of Parliamentarians
on Population and Development, a Bangkok-based body lobbying the region's
legislatures on development issues.
And even after government's agree to
accept the challenge of reducing maternal mortality in their countries, no
universal model will provide a solution, adds Yasuo Fukuda, a Japanese
parliamentarian and a leading figure in this campaign. 'The solutions have to
be diverse, taking into consideration the different needs of every country,'' he
said. 'But we have to overcome two common obstacles -- legislative action and
getting the budget to implement the actions.''
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