Lancet lauds health success

British medical journal The Lancet has published Bangladesh’s success story in cutting 40 per cent maternal deaths in the previous decade and says it can be a lesson for countries lagging behind. Researchers who wrote the Bangladesh chapter in this prestigious journal released on Monday also look into what explains this reduction. Maternal deaths decreased to 194 per 100,000 births in 2010 from 322 in 2001 in Bangladesh. ‘We used to speculate the factors behind this reduction, but here we showed it analysing data,’ Prof Shams El Arifeen, one of the authors, has said. He said the decrease had been ‘the result of factors within and outside the health sector’. The journal said ‘this finding holds important lessons for other countries as the world discusses and decides on the post-MDG goals and strategies’. It says that the experience also provides ‘a strong rationale’ for Bangladesh in the way of its ‘broader development agenda’ for providing improved maternal health. The authors say they reviewed the experience of Bangladesh as part of a series of in-depth country case studies commissioned by ‘Countdown to 2015’, a multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional collaboration established in 2005. The Lancet is a key Countdown partner, according to bdnews24.com.