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In Belize, for every 100,000 live births, 128 mothers die and according to World Health Organization standards, that's 28 more than the acceptable level of 100. That's why the Ministry of Health and the Pan American Health Organization are holding a two day workshop called "making motherhood safer." It's all about identifying problems that cause mother mortalities and designing initiatives to make sure expecting mothers get adequate ante-natal care. Dr. Natalia Largaespada is and advisor to the Ministry of Health's maternal and child health program.

Dr. Natalia Largaespada,
"This workshop has an objective to sit down and review what Belize is doing and to make motherhood safer by reducing mortality. Improving maternal health is one of the Millennium Development Goals and the objective, the expected result of the workshop, is that by tomorrow we fully discuss our plans so that we can work as a team, all sectors involved by the following two years. Our maternal mortality unfortunately is pretty high. The World Health Organization has a cut off point of 100 maternal deaths for every 100,000 live births as high and Belize today, for 2005, has 128 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. We are pretty high. We need to strengthen the work that is already being done so that we can contribute to reducing maternal mortality.

Maternal mortality is a multi-factoral problem. A woman can get pregnant today but all her problems, her social and economic problems, she still has them their present and there are situations that increase the risk. We have poverty, lack of education, behavior that is not adequate, early sexual activity, early pregnancy, and anemia as a result of nutritional problems that is caused also by poverty. So with all those socio-economic factors, the woman comes also with that when she gets pregnant."

Melina Guerra, Public Health Nurse
"Some of the main kinds right now is preclasa, it is the leading cause for this year, for 2005. I think out of the ten maternal deaths that we had, seven of them are due to high blood pressure during pregnancy. We have involved different persons from the health sector and other NGOs, we have involved the private hospitals, and so we are involving all the persons who are working with and dealing with pregnancies so we could share with them the different conditions affecting the pregnancies. We have had also several in-service training for healthcare personnel."

Dr. Natalia Largaespada,
"In this workshop we will decide what is the most effective prevention that are documented to be effective in other countries, in other settings, and as agreed then it is our responsibility to implement it."

The workshop concludes tomorrow.