Removing the Roadblocks from Achieving MDG 5 by Improving the Data on Maternal Mortality

By Donna J. Harrison, M.D. | May 1, 2009

By establishing Millennium Development Goal 5 (MDG 5), world leaders agreed that reducing maternal mortality was essential to fulfilling their “collective responsibility to uphold the principles of human dignity, equality and equity at the global level.” The goal aims at improving maternal health by reducing by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio between 1990 and 2015. Now at the halfway point, the world lags far behind in achieving the goal, with questionable prospects for success. This paper demonstrates one important reason why.