Following the release of new maternal and neonatal mortality estimates earlier this year, the Guttmacher Institute today released a fact sheet updating several key findings from the 2009 report Adding It Up: The Costs and Benefits of Investing in Family Planning and Maternal and Newborn Health. Guttmacher also released updated regional Adding It Up fact sheets with new estimates for Latin America and the Caribbean, South Central and Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and Arab Countries. Estimates in another related fact sheet, Facts on Satisfying the Need for Contraception in Developing Countries,were also updated to reflect the new mortality figures. Some of these fact sheets are also available in Spanish and French.

The revised estimates reduce the number of maternal and neonatal deaths that could be expected to be averted annually if the need for family planning and maternal and newborn care in developing countries were fully met.

However, Adding It Up findings that do not pertain to mortality levels remain unchanged, and the basic conclusions of the report hold true: Maternal and newborn deaths remain unacceptably high; further steep declines in such deaths are well within reach; and these declines can be achieved most effectively and economically by simultaneously investing in family planning and maternal and newborn care.

http://www.guttmacher.org/media/nr/2010/11/16/index.html