Last month, a report released by the Lancet indicated a significant drop in the maternal mortality rate from 535,900 in 2005 to 342,900 in 2008. The report sparked some media frenzy as news sources from the New York Times to the Washington Post reported the sharp decline in maternal mortality worldwide. The findings come at a time when many had begun to doubt that any progress was being made towards Millennium Development Goal 5: to reduce maternal mortality ratios by three quarters from 1990 to 2015. The journal’s editor, Dr Horton, told the New York Times that “the overall message, for the first time in a generation, is one of persistent and welcome progress.”

Dr. Horton explained that the new study was based on “more and better data, and more sophisticated statistical methods than were used in a previous analysis by a different research team that estimated more deaths.” The researchers gathered about three times as much data as the previous researchers had found. But despite Horton and other health expert’s positivity, not everyone was ready to adopt the new statistics. Critics point out that the new numbers are still primarily estimates, and reliable research is still hard to collect or absent in many countries. Despite any disagreement over the new numbers, most experts agree that the maternal mortality rate has been slow to decline, and at least in some countries is well below what is needed to achieve MDG5.

Read the report from the Lancet (subscription required) >>

Read the New York Times article >>