Egypt mortality MENAB&W.qxp

today than they did 10 or 15 years ago, thanks in large part to the national safe motherhood program. Nevertheless, maternal mortality in Egypt is still relatively high, and the country faces challenges in reducing it further. Many of these challenges involve addressing the delays women face when they need essential obstetric care. In Egypt and other countries, most maternal deaths could be avoided if women had timely access to high-quality emergency obstetric services. Every year about 1,400 Egyptian women and half of their newborns die from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. Although this level of maternal mortality (84 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births) is relatively high by international standards, recent evidence suggests that a woman’s lifetime risk of dying from maternal causes in Egypt has dropped dramatically, from 1 in 120 to 1 in 250 during the 1990s.1 Egypt’s maternal-mortality success story can be told because the country conducted two nationally representative studies less than 10 years apart. These studies make an exceptional and valuable contribution to the world’s understanding of safe motherhood, a health issue for which there is generally a lack of reliable data. The studies’ findings also provide insights into the programmatic elements associated with maternal survival. This policy brief describes Egypt’s efforts to reduce maternal deaths—a process that can offer valuable lessons for other countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), as well as for the rest of the developing world.