Focus on ways to reduce mothers’ mortality rate

The report that India is likely to miss the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) with regard to mothers’ mortality rate (MMR) is shocking. Among the eight MDGs the United Nations had chosen to achieve by the year 2015, the one on MMR was considered the easiest. Yet, 12 years after the target was set, India’s MMR is 212 per 1,00,000 live births, against a target of 109 by 2015. The MMR is calculated on the basis of the deaths of women during pregnancy or within 42 days of the termination of pregnancy. Of course, allowance has to be made for the fact that India has achieved considerable progress on this front since 1999 when the MMR stood at 437.

What the report underlines is that the pace of progress has to be quickened if the MDG has to be attained within the stipulated period. As in the case of many indices of growth, there have been wide disparities in the achievement of MMR among the states. The laggard states of Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan are behind the slow progress. While the MMR in some states in the south is comparable to that of European countries, these five states, whose MMR is comparable only to sub-Saharan Africa’s, are mainly to blame for the sad state of affairs.

As anyone with a modicum of knowledge about public health would readily concede, the only way to reduce MMR is to improve the standards of neonatal and post-natal care. States like Tamil Nadu have by extending monetary incentives to women who seek medical aid during pregnancy and prefer to deliver in hospitals, rather than at homes, have drastically reduced their MMR. Alas, in states like Uttar Pradesh and Assam, there are not enough hospitals to take care of the needy. Studies have shown that if the states concerned are able to make available at least trained nurses to handle pregnancy-related issues, it will go a long way in reducing MMR. The central and state governments should take up the achievement of MDGs as a challenge that brooks no delay.