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This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
Health Indicators: Advances and Obstacles
>> Foreign Aid in the National Interest >> Chapter 3 >> Health Indicators: Advances and Obstacles Jump to Chapter 3 Sections:
>> Health, development and aid >> Broad progress, startling changes, persistent quandaries >> Health indicators: advances and obstacles >> Health systems and services >> To review the bidding >> Implications of trends for future directions >> Implications for the philosophy and pursuit of "foreign assistance" >> Notes >> Background paper >> References
Maternal mortality
Quantifying declines is harder for maternal mortality than for infant and child mortality. This is partly because measuring maternal mortality is methodologically difficult and susceptible to wide margins of error. It is also because maternal mortality requires data on causes of death, and such data are elusive in most developing countries. Where it has been tracked, maternal mortality appears to have fallen by as much as half since the 1970s. Still, in many countries initial mortality rates were so high that even this progress results in startling differences. The lifetime risk of maternal death ranges from 1 in 4,085 in industrial countries to 1 in 61 in developing countries and 1 in 16 in the least developed countries (figure 3.7).52 And in some countries maternal mortality appears to be rising.
Given the scarcity of good data on maternal mortality, progress over the next 20 years will require better research and understanding of the source of the problem. A recent study reaffirms that maternal mortality does not result solely from poor health care at delivery or immediately after birth.54 Further declines in maternal mortality will require diversifying approaches to caring for pregnant women and continuing to increase the presence of skilled attendants at delivery.
Noncommunicable diseases
In all developing regions except Africa, noncommunicable diseases including cardiovascular disease, circulatory disease, hypertension, stroke, diabetes, cancer, and injuries have overtaken infectious diseases as the leading causes of disability and death.56 Even countries with high child and adult mortality are well into this transition. 57 So are most tropical countries, though infectious diseases remain a concern.
By 2020 noncommunicable diseases will cause 7 of every 10 deaths in developing countries (box 3.1). Given the aging of developing countries, these changing disease patterns are not surprising. Older populations have higher rates of noncommunicable diseases than infectious and parasitic diseases.
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Last Updated on: October 07, 2009 |
