Friday, April 04, 2008

Maternal mortality rate remains high in Cambodia

PHNOM PENH, April 4 (Xinhua) -- Official survey has shown that the maternal mortality rate remained high in the last five years, while childhood morality rate dropped by 6 percent each year, English-Khmer newspaper the Mekong Times said on Friday.

The number of women who died giving birth is estimated at around 472 per 100,000 live births from 2000 to 2005, Eng Huot, secretary of state at Ministry of Health, was quoted as telling the 29th annual national health conference here on Thursday.

"We have seen that, on average, the childhood mortality rate has dropped by 6 percent per year, but the maternal morality rate is not dropping. It remains high," he said.

He didn't elaborate on the reason. The paper quoted opposition lawmakers as saying that the budget prioritized for this sector was largely not being used.

Cambodia, with a weak health sector, has for years been making efforts to reduce maternal and childhood death rates.

In 2008, the National Assembly approved a budget of some 101 million U.S. dollars for the health sector, around 20 percent more than 2007, in order to improve the sector to a standard comparable to the other countries in the region.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

"We have seen that, on average, the childhood mortality rate has dropped by 6 percent per year, but the maternal morality rate is not dropping. It remains high,"

Outstanding work, and God blesses all.

Please continue to take care of our kids first. We (parents) have patient.

Anonymous said...

the question should be 'why?' gov't need to look into this in order to turn it around for good. this is unacceptible as it is not right for cambodia to have this high mortality rate than the rest of the world community. why?

Anonymous said...

because the region contains more parasites and bacteria than the rest of the world, that is why?