UN Women

Improving Maternal Health Care

Report of the Chair
______________________________________________________________________________

I. Overview
Maternal health refers to the health of a woman during pregnancy, childbirth, and the
postpartum period.[4] Every day, approximately 800 women die from preventable causes related
to pregnancy and childbirth - 99% of which occur in developing countries. [5] The immense
amount of maternal deaths occur primarily because women lack adequate health care in most
parts of the world. Specific causes of maternal complications result from the following:
hemorrhage, obstructed labor, hypertensive disorders, unsafe abortion, and infection. [3] In
developing regions, there is often only a select amount of proficient doctors and healthcare
workers. Despite some areas gaining more antenatal workers in the past ten years, 64% of
women in a low-income area are still not able to receive care. [5] Roughly 50 million babies are
born each year without professional assistance, and almost 3 million of these babies die within
the first four weeks. [10]
II. History
Data on maternal mortality is composed in three ways: health services, vital registration,
and population based surveys, which have been used since the early 1900s. Using only one
method does not always allow for accurate results, especially in developing countries.[6]
The issue of mobility can skew the results from a vital registration-- medical certificate of
the cause of death. Pregnant women often will return home temporarily in order to find better
health care- regardless of where she is already registered. This migration makes it very hard to
identify mortality of any kind. [6]
Health sources remain the main routine source of data on maternal mortality for many
developing countries. [6] These sources arent always reliable, not only because many do not end

up going to a hospital, but there is often selection bias within the reports from hospitals. It is up
to the hospitals discretion whether or not to include a death in the reports. If a women dies of the
any illness while she is in her first trimester, the hospital may not relate her death to the
pregnancy and exclude the statistic. [6] And because there are already a low number of trained
antenatal workers in most developing countries, it is often difficult for statistics to be properly
recorded because only 46% of women are able to receive proper care. [5]
For producing reliable estimates that are up to date, surveys are often the last choice.
Also, such a large sample size is needed for the survey that other methods are sought out instead.
Common alternative approaches include the census and demographic surveillance systems
(DSS). There are over 30 DDS sites around the world that serve as field sites for highly qualified
epidemiologists, demographers, economists, sociologists, and clinicians to interpret the health
issues in the area. [7] Over time, it is evident that what these workers infer does not correctly
represent the population at large, and because the DDS sites arent concentrated around maternal
health issues specifically, there usually isnt a clear statistic drawn about maternal mortality.
There is also a high probability of report bias in any type of survey. When the statistics are put
into the context of maternal mortality, the ratio often represents the probability a woman has of
dying when she is pregnant in the specific country, and not the amount of women who actually
are dying from maternal complications. [8]
For many developing countries like Egypt and Jamaica, RAMOS is used. RAMOS stands
for Reproductive Age Mortality Studies which combines health services, registration, and
surveys in order to create the most accurate model of figuring out the ratio of maternal deaths in
developing countries. However, all of biases present in each method by itself are still present
when combined in RAMOS. [6]

III. Position and Research Tips

Consider the following questions when researching your country:
Is your country developed or developing?
What is the history of this maternal mortality in your country?
What are the current rates of maternal mortality in your country?

 What has your country done to improve this issue?

Useful Web Sources

Please utilize official UN websites and websites that end in .org, .int, or .gov. Try to stay
away from blogs or websites like Wikipedia unless you can find a direct, reliable citation for
your information because often times the information you will find will have more bias than
credibility. Official UN websites like UNICEF, UN Women, WHO, and pages about Millenium
Goals are very helpful and feel free to use any of the resources below.
UN Women Official Website
The official website for this committee is a highly favorable resource to utilize for your
research because it very thoroughly explains UN Womens goals, interests, and hope for women
in the future, which are not restricted to improving maternal mortality.
CIA: The World Factbook
The CIA World Factbook provides excellent, detailed information on individual
countries, which allows delegates become familiar with their countries quickly.
UNICEF Statistics
UNICEFs data has the current status and progress of countries reaching the MDG for
2015, and links to other sites that will further assist in delegates comprehension of maternal
mortality and their countrys position.
Women Deliver
This website is very useful for developed countries; it has many useful statistics and
predicts the outcomes and improvements of lowering maternal mortality.
Millenium Development Goals
This resource can help delegates broaden their understanding of the Millenium Development
Goals and become more familiar with the recognitions of womens health within other

committees.
IV. References
[1] Data on Maternal Mortality. (n.d.). GapMinder. Retrieved May 18, 2014, from
http://www.gapminder.org/documentation/documentation/gapdoc010.pdf
[2] Every Woman Every Child. (n.d.). About. Retrieved May 18, 2014, from
http://www.everywomaneverychild.org/about
[3] Goal: Improve maternal health. (n.d.). UNICEF -. Retrieved May 18, 2014, from
http://www.unicef.org/mdg/maternal.html
[4] Maternal health. (n.d.). WHO. Retrieved May 17, 2014, from
http://www.who.int/topics/maternal_health/en/
[5] Maternal mortality. (n.d.). WHO. Retrieved May 18, 2014, from
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs348/en/
[6] Measuring and Estimating Maternal Mortality in the Era of HIV/AIDS. (n.d.). UN.org.
Retrieved May 18, 2014, from
http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/adultmort/GRAHAM_Paper8.pdf
[7] "Measuring the Environmental Dimensions of Human Migration: The Demographers
Toolkit." Fussell, Elizabeth, Lori M Hunter, and Clark L Gray. (2014).
http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/84/3/editorial20306html/en/
[8] Rights-Based Maternal Health | The Issues | CHANGE. (n.d.). Rights-Based Maternal
Health | The Issues | CHANGE. Retrieved May 18, 2014, from
http://www.genderhealth.org/the_issues/maternal_health/
[9] UN Women - Headquarters. (n.d.). UN Women - Headquarters. Retrieved May 17, 2014,
from http://www.unwomen.org/
[10] United Nations Millennium Development Goals. (n.d.). UN News Center. Retrieved May
18, 2014, from http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/maternal.shtml

V. Notes
Delegates, welcome to MUNSA XIX. We are so excited to have you in UN Women! We look
forward to chairing this years MUNSA.
Co-Chairs Emails:
Elizabeth McClain: emcclain1601@stu.neisd.net
Kathryn Swank: kswank7464@stu.neisd.net
Lindsay Hutchinson: lhutchinson8802@stu.neisd.net