A/HRC/14/39 address issues of preventable maternal mortality and morbidity. Finally, in chapter V, it identifies how the Council can add value to existing initiatives through a human rights analysis, including efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goal on improving maternal health, and recommends options for better addressing the human rights dimensions of preventable maternal mortality and morbidity throughout the United Nations system. 3. Reports prepared ahead of the forthcoming review at the High-level Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly in September 2010 (the Millennium Development Goals Summit) indicate that of all the Goals, Goal 5 on improving maternal health, with its related targets on reducing the maternal mortality ratio by three quarters by 2015 and achieving universal access to reproductive health, is the furthest from being achieved.6 Human Rights Council resolution 11/8 could thus not have been more timely in acknowledging that preventable maternal mortality and morbidity is a human rights issue and challenge that needs increased attention. II. Maternal mortality and morbidity: definition and scale 4. WHO defines maternal mortality as: “the death of a woman while pregnant or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy … from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy or its management, but not from accidental or incidental causes”.7 In turn, maternal morbidity is defined as “a condition outside of normal pregnancy, labour, and childbirth that negatively affects a woman’s health during those times”.8 5. Although standardized definitions of maternal mortality and its causes exist, it is difficult to accurately measure levels of maternal mortality for three primary reasons: (a) it is challenging to identify maternal deaths; (b) the woman’s pregnancy status may not be known; and (c) in country settings where medical certification of cause of death does not exist, accurate attribution of female deaths as maternal death is difficult.9 While updating of statistics is a time-consuming exercise, new global statistics are currently being prepared in the context of the upcoming 2010 Millennium Development Goals Summit to measure international efforts towards achieving the Goals, including on improving maternal health. Pending this, according to the most recent official estimates over half a million maternal deaths occur worldwide each year. This translates into an adult lifetime risk of maternal death (the probability that a 15-year-old female will die eventually from a maternal cause) of 1 in 92 for women worldwide.10 In some countries, this risk of maternal death is as high as 1 in 7.11 Meanwhile for every maternal death, an estimated 20 women suffer pregnancyrelated injury, infection or disease, i.e. approximately 10 million women. In some cases, 6 7 8 9 10 11 4 Thoraya Ahmed Obaid (UNFPA), “Successful strategies for women’s health and rights: achieving MDG 5”, keynote address to the Swedish International Development Agency, 22 May 2008; Margaret Chan (WHO), “Opening remarks at the roundtable with women leaders on MDG 5”, 25 September 2008, available from www.who.int/making_pregnancy_safer/events/2008/mdg5/speech/ en/index.html. See also The Millennium Development Goals Report 2009 (United Nations publication, Sales No. E.09.I.12), p. 27. WHO, International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, Tenth Revision, vol. 2, Instruction Manual, 2nd ed. (Geneva, 2004), p. 141. S.A. Orshan, Maternity, Newborn and Women’s Health Nursing: Comprehensive Care across the Life Span (Philadelphia, Lippincott Williams and Wilkins, 2008), p. 15. WHO, Maternal Mortality in 2005: Estimates Developed by WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA and The World Bank (Geneva, 2007), p. 5; see also pp. 1–2. Ibid., p. 16. Ibid., p. 1. GE.10-12949