Happy Mother's Day, World

Since the 1990s, concerted initiatives to reduce maternal mortality have been launched around the world. To assess the success of these programs, researchers used complex statistical models to combine data from multiple sources in 180 countries.

From 1990 to 2013, maternal mortality dropped in both developed and developing countries; however, maternal death rates in developing countries are still almost 20 times higher than those in developed countries. Further, U.S. maternal death rates are twice those in Canada and thrice those in many other countries (e.g., Australia, Denmark, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Malta, Poland, Singapore, Switzerland). In low-income countries, the most common causes of maternal death in both 1990 and 2013 were abortion and hemorrhage. In sub-Saharan Africa during the last decade, post-abortion death rates have significantly increased.