April 7, 2005 - 2:20 AM

WHO: Millions of Mothers, Babies Die Needlessly

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) - One woman still dies every minute inpregnancy or childbirth, while each 60 seconds 20 youngchildren succumb to easily preventable disease, the WorldHealth Organization (WHO) said on Thursday.

The United Nations agency said the situation for expectantmothers and babies had worsened since the 1990s in dozens ofcountries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, defying globaladvances in medicine.

"Despite much good work over the years, 10.6 millionchildren and 529,000 mothers are still dying each year, mostlyfrom avoidable causes," the WHO said in its annual report,entitled "Make Every Mother and Child Count."

On current trends, some countries in Africa could takeanother 150 years to reach U.N. targets for reducing maternalmortality, WHO officials said.

The WHO called for an additional investment of $9 billionannually on maternal and child healthcare, including programsto combat malnutrition and avoidable diseases.

Pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria, measles, AIDS and neonatalailments were the main killers of children under five. The tollincludes more than four million newborns who die before theyare a month old, but not some 3.3 million stillbirths annually.

Some 68,000 maternal deaths, or just under 10 percent, areattributable to unsafe abortions, mostly in poor countries.

"If you look at it another way, one woman a minute dies inpregnancy or childbirth, and 20 children under the age of fivedie in that same minute, across the world," Denis Aitken, asenior WHO official, told a news briefing in Geneva.

Countries reporting a rise in newborn, child and maternalmortality rates included Kenya, Rwanda, Swaziland,Turkmenistan, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

"The lifetime risk for a woman to lose a newborn baby isnow 1 in 5 in Africa, compared with 1 in 125 in more developedcountries," the report said.

AFFORDABLE TREATMENTS

Attending to the estimated 136 million births worldwideevery year is one of the major challenges facing cash-strappedhealth systems, it said.

Only 43 percent of mothers and newborns receive some care.

Yet simple and affordable treatments exist to preventmaternal and child deaths, including vaccinations, antibiotics,insecticide-treated bed-nets and oral rehydration salts.

"A woman can bleed to death in two hours if shehaemorrhages during childbirth," said Marie-Paule Kieny, headof family and community health at the WHO. "Newborns must bequickly washed, kept warm and preferably breastfed within anhour after birth."

Around 2.2 million women living with the HIV virus thatcauses AIDS give birth each year.

More than half of all child deaths are concentrated in justsix countries -- China, the Democratic Republic of Congo,Ethiopia, India, Nigeria and Pakistan.

Nineteen of the 20 countries with the highest maternalmortality ratios are in sub-Saharan African, the report said.

Total public health spending in the 75 hardest-hitcountries is about $97 billion a year, it said.

An additional $9 billion is required for each year of thenext decade to reach the U.N. Millennium Development Goals ofreducing child mortality by two-thirds and maternal mortalityby three-quarters by the target date of 2015, the WHO said.