Resumen

ELU, MARÍA DEL CARMEN  y  SANTOS PRUNEDA, ELSA. Mortalidad materna: una tragedia evitable. Perinatol. Reprod. Hum. [online]. 2004, vol.18, n.1, pp.44-52. ISSN 2524-1710.

The maternal mortality represents a serious problem of public health that can be avoided. Is considered that they happen annually around 600 thousand in the world, in great majority in developing countries, where the risk of women to die for maternal causes is of one in 48, in comparison of one in 1,800 in developed countries. Enormous variations in the rates of maternal mortality (RMM) among countries, and even to their interior, they show their intrinsic linking with poverty. Poverty deprives big sectors of population from the access to the minimum conditions that all human being needs to survive and to develop his capacities. Carried out studies show, however, the effects of poverty in maternal deaths are synergy by social and cultural factors, generally, they are not foreseen neither taken into account when designing and the organization of health programs. The World Health Organization claim the necessity to diminish this deaths and going beyond the immediate causes, in order to identify and to modify the social and cultural factors. Inside a global context, the present article is focused, particularly, to the relationship of the maternal deaths with this factors, at the same time that it underlines the necessity of starting strategies to modify the conditions to achieve it.

Palabras llave : Maternal mortality; social factors; poverty; gender.