Morocco has been making strides in reducing its maternal mortality ratio over the past few years. In 2000, the MMR stood at 262 deaths per 100,000 live births, while in 2008 it was 124, a reduction of over 50%. Since 1990, the baseline for the Millennium Development Goals, Morocco’s MMR has decreased by about 68%, which means that it is on pace to accomplish MDG 5.
Recently, a conference was held in Morocco on the topic of maternal mortality. Karen Grepin, from NYU, attended the conference and reports:
The [Moroccan] strategy involves three major components: addressing physician and financial barriers, improving quality of care, and improving the management of governance of the programs themselves…Given the number of interventions that were simultaneously launched it is difficult to tease out exactly what work, when, for whom, and why. The academic in me me wished there had been more evaluation of their experience and was left really wondering which interventions had been the most effective and why — but we we may never know.
But I did not leave the country disappointed as in the end I did learn why Morocco was able to achieve such a miraculous decline in maternal mortality: strong political commitment.