MATERNAL MORTALITY IN DEVELOPING-COUNTRIES - A COMPARISON OF RATES FROM 2 INTERNATIONAL COMPENDIA

The World Bank's World Development Report 1993 and the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Report 1993 present data on maternal mortality in developing countries for 1988. Although both give as their source the World Health Organization's Maternal Mortality: A Global Factbook, their estimates of material mortality rates per 100,000 births differ by as much as 100 points for almost half the countries covered in common. Neither publication offers sufficient-explanation in technical notes of how figures were obtained from the multitude of hospital studies, community studies, and civil registration data, among other sources supplied in the WHO publication. Country-by-country comparisons make clear that reliable data on maternal mortality do not exist for most developing countries.