A maternal death is the death of a woman who is pregnant or who has been pregnant within six weeks of the time of her death. Maternal mortality is the field of medicine that studies the causes of maternal deaths and tries to prevent them.  Each year approximately 524,000 women die from complications of pregnancy and childbirth.  Of these deaths, 99% occur in impoverished, developing countries---and for every woman who dies, another 40 or 50 suffer serious injuries, such as a fistula, a hemorrhage, a stroke, or an infection.

            The five most common causes of maternal death worldwide are hemorrhage, infection, high blood pressure problems in pregnancy (pre-eclampsia/eclampsia), obstructed labor (the most common cause of fistulas) and complications from unsafe abortion.  

            Maternal mortality is commonly measured using a statistic called the maternal mortality ratio:  the number of maternal deaths occurring per 100,000 live births.  The maternal mortality ratio gives a woman’s risk of dying during any single pregnancy in any particular country.  However, an even more important statistic is a woman’s lifetime risk of dying from a pregnancy-related complication.  A woman’s lifetime risk is markedly increased the greater the number of pregnancies she has.  It is highest in countries in which emergency obstetric services are poor and where women have many pregnancies.  Fistulas are most common in countries which have high rates of maternal death and high maternal mortality ratios.

Maternal mortality is the health indicator that consistently shows the greatest discrepancies between wealthy industrialized nations and impoverished developing countries.  With the sole exception of Afghanistan, all of the countries with the highest maternal mortality ratios in the world are found in sub-Saharan Africa.  Both maternal mortality and obstetric fistula formation are diseases of poverty.

The table below gives examples of the maternal mortality statistics in several industrialized countries and several impoverished countries in Africa and Asia (Source:  Maternal Mortality in 2000:  Estimates Developed by WHO, UNFPA, and UNICEF;  Geneva:  WHO, 2004).