Needs and Possibilities for Improving Maternal Nutrition in Rural Tanzania

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Maternal mortality remains high, particularly in developing countries where 99% of the deaths occur. Each year more than half a million women die from treatable or preventable complications during childbirth. Little progress has been made in saving women’s lives between 1990 and 2005. Globally maternal mortality has decreased by less than 1 percent per year during this period. Although other regions such as Northern Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean as well as South-East Asia managed to reduce their maternal mortality ratio by one third, in Sub-Saharan Africa, the region with the highest level of maternal mortality, progress made was negligible. The fact that maternal deaths are due to multiple causes– hemorrhages, hypertensive disorders, infections, obstructed labor, anemia, abortions, and other causes– no single intervention can address maternal problems unless well planned surveys come up with locationspecific findings. Although reproductive health care services– prenatal, antennal, and postnatal health care services as well as attendance at delivery by health personnelcould indeed prevent most of these deaths, other causes, which constitute 25% of the causes of maternal deaths, should be given attention.