Maternal health and the millennium development goals.

Abstract

At the United Nations “Millennium Development Goals” Meeting, in New York, USA, in 2000, the representative members of 189 countries approved a set of goals and quantitative targets, to be met within a limit of time (in 2015). The document contains eight goals, 18 targets and 48 key indicators aimed at achieving progress in health. The 5th Goal is related to the “Improvement of Maternal Health”, and ascertains that the 2015 target is to reduce 1990 Maternal Mortality Ratios in three fourths. This paper aims to describe the Brazilian maternal mortality status, including data corrections, from 1996 to 2004. In this period, it was not detected any improvements in maternal health, or reduction of the indicators, but, to the contrary, it is showed a discrete increase. This is maybe a consequence of the improvement on the quality of data. It is presented a correction factor to measure the actual maternal mortality and it is analyzed mortality ratios according to the maternal age. It was pointed out the importance of adolescent maternal deaths and the proportion of direct and indirect obstetric deaths. The findings show that the chance of reaching the target is very small.