Safe Motherhood: A Review - Family Care International

As the graph below illustrates, similar trends
appear in the Asia and Pacific region. From
January 1, 2001 until June 1, 2005, maternal
health was mentioned in 813 articles; 212
(26%) of which were focused on the MDGs
(the Asia and Pacific region includes Australia;
89 of the non-MDG articles identified in
this search discussed domestic Australian
maternal health issues). In comparison, from
June 30, 1996 until December 31, 2000 just
290 articles from the Asia and Pacific region
mention maternal health.
Number of Articles
300
250
200
150
100
50
0
While the MDG-related articles were
numerous, most of them did not dedicate
significant attention to maternal health.
Frequently, maternal health appeared merely
in a summary of goals within an article that
examined a country’s effort to achieve one of
the other goals, such as reducing poverty or
increasing primary school enrolment.
Overwhelmingly, MDG-focused articles
that were maternal health specific either
lauded a country’s success in improving safe
motherhood or lamented the likelihood that
the country would fail to meet the maternal
health goal by 2015. Regional differences in
whether the coverage was slanted toward
“lauding” or “lamenting” maternal health
were striking.
In Asia, in safe motherhood “success story”
countries such as Sri Lanka and Malaysia,
the governments garnered media attention
for their assertion that they had met the
Asia and Pacific Maternal Health and MDGs Coverage
2001
2002
2003
Year
2004
Maternal Health
Maternal Health
and MDGs
Jan-May
2005
goal of reducing maternal mortality by
75%. Interestingly, the Chinese government
asserted that, while progress had been
made, they needed to work harder to meet
their MDG on maternal health and noted
that expanding access to skilled care during
childbirth was key to achieving a 75%
reduction in maternal mortality by 2015.