2. Maternal Mortality Maternal mortality is the death of a women during or shortly after pregnancy. Major direct causes are hemorrhage, infection, high blood pressure, unsafe abortion, and obstructed labor.
3. In 2008, 358,000 maternal deaths occurred world-wide. Of these 358,000 deaths, 99% occurred in developing countries and most were avoidable. More than half of these deaths occur in Sub-Saharan Africa and one-third occur in South Asia. In underdeveloped countries, a woman’s lifetime risk for maternal mortality is 1 in 75, where as in developed countries it is 1 in 7,300 or higher (in Ireland the ratio is 1 in 48,000).
4. Maternal Mortality Prevention The United Nations Millennium Development Goal 5 deals with maternal mortality. It aims to reduce the maternal mortality ratio by ¾. It also is striving to achieve universal access to reproductive health services. One step to avoid maternal mortality is to ensure women have access to family planning and safe abortion. Women who choose to continue pregnancy also need to have access to health facilities to care for themselves and their child.
5. Maternal Mortality Prevention Many women do not have access to such health care services because they live in poverty. It is too expensive to get these health services and sometimes they can’t even afford to travel to these facilities. Many of them give birth without having a skilled professional present assisting them.
6. HIV/AIDS HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) – A sexually transmitted disease that weakens your immune system to the point of failure. AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) – A severe or very advanced HIV infection.
12. HIV/AIDS statistics 33.3 million people were estimated to be living with HIV/AIDS in 2009, 2.6 million newly infected Sub-Sahara African region is most affected by being home to 68% of people world-wide infected with HIV/AIDS Services for preventing mother-to-child transmission are more accessible, decreasing the number of children being born with HIV Estimated 370,000 children infected in 2009, down 24% from 2004 AIDS related deaths are also decreasing due to the increased amount of care Estimated 1.8 million deaths in 2009, down from 2.1 million in 2004
13. HIV/AIDS prevention Most countries have started campaigns and programs to prevent the spread of HIV In the US and Latin America, prevention programs focus on higher risk groups, such as gay men, sex workers, and mother-to-child transmissions In European countries, they have reduced transmissions in medical settings and injecting drug users In Africa, since they are the worst affected by HIV, their main goal is to persuade people to change their sexual behavior In Thailand and India, programs focus on sex workers In Russia, programs focus on drug use
14. HIV/AIDS prevention Young people are taking initiative in the prevention of the spread of HIV. They are practicing safer sexual behavior and have shown decreases in some countries as high as 25% in the spread of the infection. Many people also have more accessibility to treatment. In 2009, 1.2 million people received antiretroviral therapy for the first time, an increase of 30% from 2008.
