Nearly Half Of All Women Deliver Their Babies With No Help From Skilled Personnel, Say PAI And CARE Women in the United States face greater risks to their sexual and reproductive health than women in Singapore and many European nations. However, those risks are far less than those faced by women in Africa, according to a new study ranking 133 countries released today by Population Action International (PAI).
Italy and Ethiopia are ranked lowest and highest risk respectively by the PAI study.
As the nations of the world today mark International Women’s Day, PAI, a leading population policy group, and CARE, one of the world’s largest international relief and development organizations, are highlighting the importance of reproductive health care in women’s lives and in the battle against global poverty.
In developing countries, nearly half of all women deliver their babies with no help from skilled health personnel, and there are 150 million women who say they want to prevent or delay their next pregnancy, yet do not have access to contraceptives.
Key findings of the study:
One in every 65 women in developing countries will die from reproductive health-related causes, a rate 33 times higher than in developed countries. 515,000 women die each year in pregnancy and childbirth and millions more become ill or disabled; half of these deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa. Teen birth rates are highest in sub-Saharan Africa where one in five teenage girls give birth. They are lowest in Japan, Korea, Netherlands and Switzerland with fewer than one in 100. In the U.S. one in 20 teenage girls give birth each year, the highest of any industrialized county. In overall reproductive health, the U.S. ranks 15th, below Singapore and just above Lithuania and the Czech Republic, primarily because of its high teenage birth rate.
