§ Mrs. SpelmanTo ask the Secretary of State for International Development what recent assessment her Department has made of rates of maternal mortality in 437W Africa; and what recent evaluation she has made of the impact of her Department's programmes on rates of maternal mortality. [80550]
§ Clare ShortImproving maternal health is a Millennium Development Goal (MDG) and the most difficult goal to meet. DFID is committed to working towards achieving this goal and the associated target to reduce the maternal mortality ratio by three quarters between 1990 and 2015.
Maternal mortality is difficult to measure and most poor countries have poor systems and lack reliable estimates of the number of women who die in pregnancy. We have to rely on standard surveys of maternal mortality as and when they are undertaken. Monitoring and evaluation of the impacts of DFID's programmes tend to be against proxy indicators. An internationally accepted proxy indicator for maternal mortality reduction is the proportion of births attended by skilled attendants. Using this indicator we can see progress in Latin America and the Caribbean, but in Sub-Saharan Africa where poverty is deepest and HIV/AIDS makes progress more difficult, there has been no significant change. DFID has and will continue to work with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the World Health Organisation (WHO), the World Bank and others to develop new and improved tools and methods to measure maternal mortality and evaluate the effectiveness of maternal and neo-natal healthcare strategies.
We will continue to work bilaterally and with multilateral agencies towards the reduction of maternal mortality. Greater investment in health and more political commitment from national governments and international development agencies is needed to address this issue.