Chris Murray: The number of maternal deaths is actually going down, where previously we thought it would be constant for the last 30 years.

Chris Murray is an MD and director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. Dr. Murray is principal author of an April 2010 study showing that, around the world, fewer women are dying in childbirth.

Chris Murray: The good news is that some countries have proven that we can make progress – countries like Egypt, or Bolivia, or China or even India.

The report, published in the medical journal the Lancet, revealed that the number of women dying in pregnancy and childbirth has dropped by more than 35 percent in the past 30 years. Thirty years ago, there were half a million deaths from childbirth each year. In 2008, there 343,000 deaths from childbirth. Murray said that’s still too many.

Chris Murray: Three hundred forty thousand deaths from something that is almost entirely preventable is just too many. So we need to have accelerated attention and funding for maternal health programs.

Murray said that there are three major factors that are contributing to the decline in the number of women dying in childbirth – lower pregnancy rates in some countries, more education for women, and higher income, which improves nutrition and access to health care. Murray said that some places, such as sub-Saharan Africa, still have high death rates for women in pregnancy and childbirth. But he hopes it will be possible for one part of the world to learn from another.

Chris Murray: There’s enough evidence of progress in countries that means we can learn from their success and translate that into accelerated progress in the rest of the world, particularly sub-Saharan Africa where maternal mortality is still actually a growing problem.

The United Nations set a goal of reducing three quarters of women dying in childbirth globally and achieving universal access to reproductive health by 2015. Murray said that the world will not achieve this goal this year, but he said we are making significant strides toward it.

Chris Murray: It’s a very ambitious target and, in fact, only about 20 countries are going to achieve this target. What’s important to recognize is that there are a lot of countries that won’t achieve that target but have been making quite substantial progress.

Murray said that factors like improving access to reproductive healthcare and HIV prevention would help to reduce the number of women dying in childbirth.

Chris Murray: When you look at what women actually die from during pregnancy, some of the more important things are unstoppable bleeding after delivery. That’s probably, other than HIV, the other major cause of maternal mortality. There are both blood transfusions as well as drug interventions that can be used to tackle post-partum bleeding after delivery. Giving access to those interventions is an important component to reducing maternal mortality.