Estimates released by WHO in September 2010 show that the annual number of women who died from complications during pregnancy and childbirth declined by one-third between 1990 and 2008. Even so, about 356,000 deaths from pregnancy-related causes occur each year in developing countries.
Likewise, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation released estimates in May 2010 showing that newborn deaths declined from 3.5 million to 3.2 million annually over the same period.
These new maternal and neonatal mortality estimates change a few of the key findings from the 2009 Guttmacher-UNFPA report Adding It Up: The Costs and Benefits of Investing in Family Planning and Maternal and Newborn Health.
Specifically, the revised estimates reduce the numbers of maternal and neonatal deaths that would be averted if the recommendations in Adding It Up were implemented. However, the proportional impact of implementing those recommendations would be essentially unchanged, as would all Adding It Up findings that do not pertain to mortality levels.
Despite these updated findings, the basic conclusions of Adding It Up also are unchanged—maternal and newborn deaths remain unacceptably high; further steep declines in such deaths are well within reach; and these declines would be most efficiently achieved, and at a lower total cost, by simultaneously investing in family planning and maternal and newborn care.
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