THE government, particularly the Department of Health, needs to redouble its efforts to reduce deaths among mothers during childbirth if the Philippines is to meet the target it committed under the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goal (MDG).

In the primary results of the 2006 Family Planning Survey (FPS) conducted by the National Statistics Office (NSO), the agency said that while maternal mortality declined slightly to 162 out of 100,000 live births, the difference is not “statistically significant.”

“The apparent decline from 172 to 162 maternal deaths tends to reflect improvements in maternal health in the country but the difference is not statistically significant,” said NSO administrator Carmelita N. Ericta.

“The 2006 FPS Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) is a decrease of only 22 percent from the base estimate of (53 deaths per 100,000 live births by 2015), meaning maternal health program implementers need to redouble efforts to achieve the desired MDG target on maternal mortality,” said Ericta.

The MDGs, agreed in 2000 by leaders of 189 countries, including the Philippines, call to reduce by three quarters the number of maternal deaths globally between 1990 and 2015. The MDGs are a set of targets to improve quality of life.

For the Philippines, and using the 1993 National Demographic Survey (NDS) MMR as base estimate, the number of maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in 2015 should be equal to 53.

The 2006 FPS also provided estimates of infant mortality rates (IMR) and under-five mortality rates (U-5MR). Estimates of IMR, the probability of a child born in a specified year dying before reaching the age of one year showed 24 deaths per 1,000 for the five years preceding the survey.

Among the regions, the Zamboanga Peninsula exhibited the highest IMR at 38 deaths per 1,000 live births while Northern Mindanao had the lowest IMR with 16 deaths per 1,000 live births.

The 2006 FPS, the NSO said, is the 10th in a series of family planning surveys conducted nationwide by agency since 1995. Funding assistance for the FPS was provided by the United States Agency for International Development, Australian Agency for International Development, The David and Lucille Packard Foundation and the United Nations Children’s Fund.

Ericta said other important results and findings on family planning and maternal and child health will be presented in a forum scheduled in April.

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THE government, particularly the Department of Health, needs to redouble its efforts to reduce deaths among mothers during childbirth if the Philippines is to meet the target it committed under the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goal (MDG).

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