According to the World Health Organization (WHO), "a maternal death is the death of a woman
while pregnant or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy, irrespective of the duration and
site of the pregnancy, from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy or its
management but not from accidental or incidental causes.
1
Statistics from the United Nations
indicate that each year, more than 350,000 women in the developing world, between the ages
of 15-49 die of pregnancy and child-birth related complications and that Asia and Sub-Saharan
Africa accounted for 87 percent (313,000) of global maternal deaths. According to the WHO, a
woman's lifetime risk of dying from pregnancy is 1 in 3700 in North America compared to 1 in
16 in Africa. In Ghana, the risk is 1 in 35 (WHO, n.d.).