Improve Maternal health

On a yearly basis, more than half a million women die as a result of their pregnancy. Bleeding, infections and high blood pressure are often occurring causes of death which could have been prevented with good medical help and maternity care. This millennium goal objective is that mother mortality as a result of complications during the pregnancy and child birth has to be reduced by 75% in 2015 compared to 1990.
Apart from complications during the pregnancy and child birth, mother mortality is also a result of illegal and dangerous abortions. Access to birth control and safe abortions is therefore very important as well as the right for women to choose their own sexuality and to have children or not. All women must have access to reproductive healthcare by 2015.

Current situation:

There has hardly been any progression on this goal, since 1990 there has only been a hardly noticable decline. In 2005, approximately 533.000 women died as a result of complication during the pregnancy or birth of a child. Most of these deaths, 85 percent, took place in Sub-Sahara Africa and South-Asia.
The exact figure is difficult to establish due to incomplete or unreliable figures. For this reason, the percentage of births which have taken place whilst under professional healthcare are being tracked, this percentage increased from 53 in 1990 to 61 in 2007. Especially in North-Africa and East-Asia the improvement has been noticeable. On the other hand, in Sub-Sahara Africa and South-Asia more than half child births take place without a doctor or nurse present. The WHO and UNICEF recommend at least 4 checks during pregnancy.