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Press Release
1 June 2007
UK announces £10 million support to save the lives of 25,000 women and babies in
Bangladesh
Gareth
Thomas, Minister for International Development, today announced that the UK will
give £10 million to support a joint UN and Government of Bangladesh programme
that will prevent more than 25,000 Bangladeshi women and babies from dying
during pregnancy and childbirth over the next five years.
Announcing the publication of DFID’s
second annual Maternal
Health Progress Report
(831
kb), which details the scale of the international challenge and what the UK is
doing to help to reduce the 529,000 maternal deaths every year, Mr Thomas said:
"Over the course of her life a women living in Bangladesh is a hundred times more likely to die during pregnancy or childbirth than in the UK, but the majority of these deaths could be prevented if there were more emergency obstetric facilities and professionally trained staff.
"This programme will work with local communities to identify the best way to stop women and babies dying needlessly. This can mean providing women with vouchers so that they can afford to pay for transport to a hospital, buying emergency obstetric equipment or providing incentives for trained surgeons and anaesthetists to work in remote areas.
"The globally agreed Millennium Development Goal to reduce maternal mortality remains not only extremely difficult to tackle, but also the MDG which we know the least about. Without accurate information about the scale of the problem, it remains hard for the international community and partner governments to target resources effectively.
"This is why I am pleased to publish today DFID’s second annual Maternal Health Progress Report, which reports global progress towards reducing maternal mortality. The Progress Report tells us that that whilst the challenge to reduce maternal and neonatal deaths remains huge, real progress is being made. Our support in Bangladesh is one of the many ways in which DFID will continue to work around the world to improve maternal and neonatal survival rates."
Women who come from the richest quarter of the population in Bangladesh are four times more likely to have received antenatal care and ten times more likely to have had skilled assistance during their delivery as women from the poorest quarter of the population. The programme that DFID and the European Community are funding will support local communities’ plans to tackle this discrepancy.
Notes for Editors
1. The
UNFPA
led programme will be running in 20 districts across Bangladesh from 2007-2012.
It will be managed jointly in the districts by UNFPA,
WHO
and
UNICEF
and will directly target up to 47.5 million people. The programme will also be
supported by the European Community.
2. The programme will support local communities in drawing up their own plans to most effectively reduce maternal and neonatal deaths in each district.
3. The programme will increase the deliveries attended by skilled health personnel by 30% in the 20 districts. Currently only 18% of births in Bangladesh are attended by a skilled birth attendant, and this figure is often lower in rural areas. By the end of the programme it is projected that:
- an additional 45,000 women with obstetric complications will receive high quality obstetric care;
- 900 maternal deaths will have been averted, reducing the maternal death rate in these districts by 10% from 3,000 to 2,700 per annum;
- 24,000 neonatal deaths will have been averted, reducing the neonatal death rate from 42,000 to 31,790 per annum.
4. In addition to support for this programme, DFID has contributed £100 million to the Health Nutrition and Population Sector Programme (2005-2010). This programme aims to modernise the health sector in Bangladesh to improve the equity and efficiency of health services.
5. DFID’s Maternal Health Progress Report is published annually and reports on progress towards Millennium Development Goal 5 to ‘Improve maternal health’. The report highlights examples of DFID’s work on maternal mortality, but focuses on providing a broad international overview of the situation. DFID is the only bilateral donor to report against the maternal mortality MDG.
For further information, contact Sarah Saxton on 020 7023 0944 or 020 7023 0600, e-mail pressoffice@dfid.gov.uk or call our Public Enquiry Point on 0845 300 4100.
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