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Joan Stephenson, PhD

JAMA. 2007;298(19):2254.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

The number of women who die due to complications in pregnancy and childbirth is not declining fast enough to achieve the global target of reducing maternal deaths by three-quarters by 2015, according to a new report released by United Nations (UN) agencies and the World Bank.

According to the report, Maternal Mortality in 2005, (available at http://www.who.int/reproductive-health/global_monitoring/), an estimated 536 000 women died as a result of complications of pregnancy or childbirth in 2005 compared with 576 000 in 1990. While an annual decline of 5.5% in maternal deaths is needed to attain the global target—one of the Millennium Development Goals agreed to by a UN summit in 2000—maternal mortality declined at an average of less than 1% per year between 1990 and 2005.

About 99% of maternal deaths are in developing countries, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Achieving the Millennium Development Goal "will require . . . [Full Text of this Article]