Situational analysis of the problem of maternal mortality in Ukraine and ways to solve it

Abstract

The maternal mortality (MM) rate is considered an integrated indicator of women’s reproductive health, which reflects not only the state of general health, including reproductive one, the quality of medical care for pregnant women and the level of organizational work of maternity institutions, but also the combined interaction of these factors with economic, ecological, sanitary-cultural, social-hygienic and other ones.The objective: to highlight the current problem of MM in Ukraine and the world, finding its main factors and ways to solve it.Materials and methods. Bibliosemantic, analytical, statistical and conceptual methods were used. The research period is 2010–2022.Results. The MM rate is currently an extreme problem worldwide. The World Health Organization (WHO) emphasizes that MM is unacceptably high. In 2020, almost 287,000 women died during and after pregnancy and childbirth. Almost 95% of all maternal deaths in 2020 occurred in low-income and lower-middle-income countries, and most of them were preventable.Conclusions. In Ukraine, there is a negative wave-like situation with the MM indicator, that is fluctuations from decrease to increase. And even the decrease in the MM indicator does not reach its level in developed countries. In 2022, 19.3 per 100,000 live births were registered. The main reasons for the high rates of MM in Ukraine are: the imperfection of the health care system in relation to the formation of reproductive health in adolescents, the loss of the potential of the family planning system, the insufficient level of accessibility of Ukrainian women to reproductive health care services, the low level of organization of perinatal assistance and its effectiveness, lack of a monitoring system for compliance with quality criteria of clinical protocols, as well as an insufficient level of socio-economic support of the population.The implementation of measures of the WHO Global Strategy and goals for the prevention of maternal mortality by 2030 will contribute to the reduction of the MM indicator, namely, the increase in the availability and quality of medical and sanitary services in the health care system of adolescents, mothers and newborns, in reproductive health, for the prevention of maternal mortality, improving the efficiency of the health care system.