Sub-Saharan African women are 175 times more likely to die from complications in pregnancy and childbirth than their sisters in rich countries, three United Nations agencies reported Monday.

But figures based on years of research into maternal mortality, an area where statistics for many countries are difficult to establish, also showed the United States with a much worse record than many European countries or Canada.

In Africa at large, a report from the three agencies said, one in 16 women do not survive a pregnancy.

But in Europe, North America and Australasia, the average is only one in 2,800, according to a report from the World Health Organization (WHO), the UNICEF children's agency, and the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA).

"These new estimates indicate....an urgent need for increased access to emergency obstetric care, especially in sub-Saharan Africa," said UNICEF Director-General in a comment issued with the report.

"Many women deliver their children alone or with family members or other untrained attendants who lack the skills to deal with complications during delivery," said WHO Director-General Lee Jong-wook.

And Thoryaya Ahmed Obaid, Executive Director of UNFPA, said many lives could be saved if women had better access to voluntary family planning.

In the year 2000, the report said, just under 530,000 women around the world died during pregnancy or childbirth, 95 percent of them in Africa or Asia, four percent in Latin America and the Caribbean, and only one percent in developed countries.

The two countries with the worst record were Sierra Leone and Afghanistan,both suffering from years of civil strife, where the risk of death among pregnant women was one in six. In Angola, Malawi and Niger, it was one in seven.

In Asia, while Japanese women have an only one in 6,000 chance of dying in pregnancy or childbirth and in South Korea one in 2,800, in China one in every 830 die, one in 660 in Malaysia, one in 48 in India, one in 31 in Pakistan and one in 24 in Nepal.

The report showed Sweden as by far the safest country for maternity in 2000 when only two women died -- an overall risk rate of one in 29,800.

Slovakia, Spain and Austria were next with rates from one in nearly 20,000, one in 17,400 and one in 16,000.

Canada recorded only 20 deaths, a rate of one in 8,700, but in the United States there were 660, at one in 2,500 pregnancies a rate well below the overall richer world average. In Britain, there were 85 deaths, a risk rate of one in 3,300.

The report did not discuss reasons for the relatively high rate in the United States or the sharp differences in the rate between developed countries.

In Latin America, the death risk rate for Chilean women based on the year 2000 figures was one in 1,100, for Argentina one in 410, for Mexico one in 370, for Brazil one in 140 and for Nicaragua one in 88.

In Haiti, one of the world's poorest countries, it was one in 29 -- but still lower than for most of sub-Saharan Africa.

Close

Today's Top News		Top Lifestyle News
+Bush open to security pledge for North Korea ( 2003-10-20) +US stands firm on one-China policy ( 2003-10-20) +Stable RMB good for development ( 2003-10-20) +Sino-Brazilian satellite to gather new science data ( 2003-10-20) +China to top charts as global tour mecca ( 2003-10-20)		+African women at high risk of childbirth death-UN ( 2003-10-20) +Back to the future ( 2003-10-20) +Ancient distillery expected to unveil mystery of origin of China's spirit making ( 2003-10-20) +Diamonds, fashionable teeth ornament in east province ( 2003-10-20) +Hong Kong: Hiking Festival kicks off in November ( 2003-10-20)