Although most of maternal deaths are preventable, maternal mortality reduction programs have not been completely successful. As targeting individuals alone does not seem to be an effective strategy to reduce maternal mortality (Millennium Development Goal 5), the present study sought to reveal the role of many distant macrostructural factors affecting maternal mortality at the global level. After preparing a global dataset, 439 indicators were selected from nearly 1800 indicators based on their relevance and the application of proper inclusion and exclusion criteria. Then Pearson correlation coefficients were computed to assess the relationship between these indicators and maternal mortality. Only indicators with statistically significant correlation more than 0.2, and missing values less than 20% were maintained. Due to the high multicollinearity among the remaining indicators, after missing values analysis and imputation, factor analysis was performed with principal component analysis as the method of extraction. Ten factors were finally extracted and entered into a multiple regression analysis. The findings of this study not only consolidated the results of earlier studies about maternal mortality, but also added new evidence. Education, private sector and trade and governance were found to be the most important macrostructural factors associated with maternal mortality. Employment and labor structure, economic policy and debt, agriculture and food production, private sector infrastructure investment, and health finance were also some other critical factors. These distal factors explained about 65% of the variability in maternal mortality between different countries. Decreasing maternal mortality requires dealing with various factors other than individual determinants including political will, reallocation of national resources (especially health resources) in the governmental sector, education, attention to the expansion of the private sector trade and improving spectrums of governance. In other words, sustainable reduction in maternal mortality (as a development indicator) will depend on long-term planning for multi-faceted development. Moreover, trade, debt, political stability, and strength of legal rights can be affected by elements outside the borders of countries and global determinants. These findings are believed to be beneficial for sustainable development in Post-2015 Development Agenda.
Equity in Health
The head of the African National Congress's religious desk, Cedric Mayson, has attacked other South African church leaders for using the HIV/Aids epidemic to make "political attacks" on President Thabo Mbeki, describing them as "a disgusting ploy".
South African president Thabo Mbeki has once again alarmed doctors and health professionals with a letter he wrote to his health minister last month ordering a re-examination of health and social policy, spending, and research in the light of figures on deaths from AIDS.
American fast food giant McDonald's has been dubbed "McGreed" in Mpumalanga after refusing to supply anti-Aids drugs to a staff member who was raped after working a late shift. The transnational corporation refuses to supply transport for staff who knock off between midnight and 2am, and who are regularly ambushed by criminals. A 29-year-old waitress who was gang-raped in February is so terrified of going home after work at the McDonald's Nelspruit branch that she spends her nights hiding in the local mall and only leaves after sunrise.
The United Nations Human Development Report Office released preliminary figures from the 2005 human development report projecting that the UN’s millennium development goals will be missed by a wide margin in Africa, reports the British Medical Journal. The UN undertook in 2000 to halve the number of people living on less than a dollar a day, to cut infant mortality by two thirds, and to give every child primary education by 2015. Ten African countries have worse infant mortality rates now than in 2000.
In this presentation, the author argues that meeting unmet need for family planning services in Kenya could help the country ‘significantly’ generate resources and save costs to achieve universal primary education, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, ensure environmental sustainability, and help combat HIV and AIDS, malaria and other diseases. It draws on research to show that greater access to FP information and services in Kenya could contribute directly to the country’s attainment of Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5 (to reduce child mortality and improve maternal health).
The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) have announced that countries are on target to halve deaths from measles, a leading vaccine-preventable killer, by the end of this year. Global measles deaths have plummeted by 39%, from 873 000 in 1999 to an estimated 530 000 in 2003. The largest reduction occurred in Africa, the region with the highest burden of the disease, where estimated measles deaths decreased by 46%.
There is a need for country-specific evidence of NCD inequalities in developing countries where populations are ageing rapidly amid economic and social change. The study measures and decomposes socioeconomic inequality in single and multiple NCD morbidity in adults aged 50 and over in China and Ghana, using data from the World Health Organisation Study on Global AGEing and Adult Health 2007–2010. In China, the prevalence of single and multiple NCD morbidity was 64.7% and 53.4%, compared with 65.9% and 55.5% respectively in Ghana. Inequalities were significant and more highly concentrated among the poor in China. In Ghana inequalities were significant and more highly concentrated among the rich. In China, rural residence contributed most to inequality in single morbidity (36.4%) and the wealth quintiles contributed most to inequality in multi morbidity (39.0%). In Ghana, the wealth quintiles contributed 24.5% to inequality in single morbidity and body mass index contributed 16.2% to the inequality in multi- morbidity. The country comparison reflects different stages of economic development and social change in China and Ghana. More studies of this type are needed to inform policy-makers about the patterning of socioeconomic inequalities in health, particularly in developing countries undergoing rapid epidemiological and demographic transitions.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), measuring health can tell us how well development is advancing the three pillars of sustainability, namely social, environmental and economic sustainability. It therefore stands to reason that indicators of healthy development can help identify success stories, barriers and the extent to which benefits of greener economies are equitably distributed. Examples of health-relevant indicators for six Rio+20 themes are presented here: sustainable cities, food, jobs, water, energy and disaster management. WHO has identified three key ways in which health can both contribute to, and benefit from, greener and cleaner development. First, achieving universal health coverage will result in healthier people who can contribute economically and socially. Reducing gender, employment and housing inequities will also improve health. Second, strategies need to be designed specifically to enhance health gains from sustainable development investments and decisions – health gains from development are not automatic. Third, governments and other role players should adopt health indicators to measure progress/achievements in sustainable development.
The fifty-fifth session of the WHO Regional Committee for Africa ended August 26 in Maputo, Mozambique, with the adoption of six resolutions, including one declaring tuberculosis (TB) a “regional emergency” and the other, proclaiming 2006 as the “Year for Acceleration of HIV Prevention.” The resolution declaring TB a regional emergency called on Member States to undertake “urgent, extraordinary and intensified actions” to bring the epidemic under control.