Safer Muslim motherhood: Social conditions and maternal mortality in the Muslim world

ABSTRACT

The greatest variation in maternal mortality is among poor countries and wealthy countries that rely on emergency obstetric technology to save a woman’s life during childbirth. However, substantial variation in maternal mortality ratios (MMRs) exists within and among poor countries with uneven access to advanced obstetric services. This article examines MMRs across the Muslim world and compares the impact of national wealth, female education, and skilled birth attendants on maternal mortality. Understanding how poor countries have lowered MMRs without access to expensive obstetric technologies suggests that certain social variables may act protectively to reduce the maternal risk for life-threatening obstetric complications that would require emergency obstetric care.

KEYWORDS:

• Maternal mortality
• Muslim women
• reproductive health
• female education
• skilled birth attendants

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We defined the Muslim world as those countries in which Islam is the religion of more than 50% of the population. See appendix (A2) for a full list of countries and maternal mortality ratios.

2. Purchasing power parity (PPP) is an economic theory that estimates the amount of adjustment needed on the exchange rate between countries in order for the exchange to be equivalent to each currency’s purchasing power (Shiffman, 2000).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Division of Graduate Education [grant number 0718359].