Study Shows Mothers’ Lives Saved
More than 20 years of efforts by maternal child health care workers has paid off with the news that pregnancy- and childbirth-related deaths worldwide have decreased substantially since the Safe Motherhood Initiative began more than 20 years ago. This information comes from an in-depth study led by researchers from the University of Washington in Seattle and published in The Lancet (1) earlier this year. Generous funding by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation allowed them to search out and include in their analysis data that had not been used in previous maternal mortality estimates, achieving more complete and accurate results.