International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics

The World Bank has released a new five-year plan aimed at helping developing countries to reduce their maternal and infant mortality rates.

Called the Reproductive Health Action Plan, it hopes to improve family planning, by providing access to contraceptives and better sex education, in 58 countries worldwide too.

More than 350,000 women die each year due to complications during pregnancy or childbirth.

Of these, 99 per cent of the deaths occur in developing nations.

"A mother’s unnecessary death in childbirth is not just a human tragedy," said Julian Schweitzer, acting vice president of human development at the World Bank.

"It's also an economic and social catastrophe that deprives her surviving children of nurture and nutrition and too often of the chance of education."

The bank has released the plan in a bid to help developing countries meet the eight Millennium Development Goals outlined by the United Nations (UN).

In 2000, the UN created the goals in order to try and tackle poverty and deaths in developing countries among other things.

Posted by Alexandra George