Preventable killers

An estimated 529,000 women died from complications of pregnancy and childbirth in 2000, virtually all in developing countries.

For every woman who dies, roughly 20 more suffer serious injury or disability - between 8 million and 20 million a year.

Experts agree that the majority of maternal deaths are preventable through family planning to reduce unintended pregnancies, skilled attendance at all deliveries and timely emergency obstetric care in all cases where complications arise.

One of the eight Millennium Development Goals set by world experts in 2000 was to reduce by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio by 2015.

Major reductions in the number of deaths have taken place in countries with either low or moderate levels of maternal mortality. Similar progress, however, has not been made in countries where maternal mortality is high.

Executive director of UNFPA Thoraya Obaid said: "The problem is implementation and monitoring implementation.

"You have to spend more on healthcare and on looking after women.

"If women are healthy then they can jump start the life of their family and the economy."

She called for the "utterly immoral" gap between the reproductive health of rich and poor women to be closed.

"In no other area of health are the disparities between rich and poor so wide and the tragic consequences so utterly immoral," she told a news conference at the Foreign Press Association in London to launch a population report .

HIV/Aids

She said another big area of health affecting women was HIV/Aids.

Worldwide, young women aged 15-24 are 1.6 times as likely as young men to be HIV positive.

"In Africa, HIV/Aids has a young woman's face and many of them are married. It is their husband who brings HIV into the house.

Part of the problem is that developing countries are facing critical shortfalls of contraceptives and condoms.

She said that in sub-Saharan Africa: "One man has access to six condoms a year. Certainly that is not sufficient to protect against HIV."

She believes the solution to the HIV problem is combination of sex education, abstinence, couples remaining faithful to their partners and greater use of condoms.

Other gender inequalities that need to be addressed include violence, education and human rights, says UNFPA.

"When women are educated, healthy and employed, and able to make decisions about childbearing and reproductive life, everyone benefits," it says.

The World Health Organization has already warned that unless concerted effort is undertaken to meet global healthcare goals, the 2015 deadline set by the governments of the world will be missed.

Its World Health Report 2005, back in April, said being poor or being a woman was often a reason for being discriminated against.

WHO's director general Dr Lee Jong-Wook said: "Giving mothers, babies and children the care they need is an absolute imperative."

Deborah Jack, chief executive of the National AIDS Trust said: "The UNFPA is right to focus on the need for greater effort to tackle gender inequality.

"Worldwide, millions of women are unable to protect themselves from HIV infection due to lack of prevention methods that can be controlled by women, causing unneccessary suffering and death. "One of the most urgent actions is to increase funding for microbicide and vaccine development and invest in education that will ensure they are accepted within communities."