E/2010/27 E/CN.6/2010/11 Achieving Universal Access to Reproductive Health Services and Commodities 2008-2015, Recognizing the need to continue to raise awareness at the national, regional and international levels about maternal mortality and morbidity, Recognizing also the role of the United Nations system, including its funds, programmes and agencies, in particular the leading roles of the World Health Organization, the United Nations Population Fund, the United Nations Children’s Fund and the World Bank, in eliminating preventable maternal mortality and morbidity and the work under the annual World Health Assembly agenda item on monitoring the achievement of the health-related Millennium Development Goals, and welcoming the ongoing efforts of United Nations entities to promote gender equality, empowerment of women, development, human rights and peace through, inter alia, the mainstreaming of a gender equality perspective in United Nations activities, Welcoming the ongoing partnerships among a variety of stakeholders at the local, national, regional and global levels aimed at addressing the multifaceted determinants of global health and the commitments and initiatives to accelerate progress on the health-related Millennium Development Goals, including those announced at the high-level event on the Millennium Development Goals held at United Nations Headquarters on 25 September 2008, and at the corresponding follow-up high-level event held on 23 September 2009, Expressing deep concern that more than half a million women and adolescent girls die every year from largely preventable complications related to pregnancy or childbirth; that, for every death, the World Health Organization has assessed that an estimated twenty additional women and girls suffer from pregnancy-related and childbirth-related injury, disability, infection and disease, that over 200 million women worldwide lack access to safe, affordable and effective forms of contraception, and that complications from pregnancy and childbirth are one of the leading causes of death for women between the ages of 15 and 19, in particular in many developing countries, and expressing grave concern over the almost nine million children — four million of them newborns — who will die in 2010, chiefly from preventable causes, and that children whose mothers die are ten times more likely to die within two years, Taking note that, as reported by the World Health Organization, 64 the causes of maternal death, in order of prevalence worldwide, include severe bleeding (haemorrhage), infections, complications due to unsafe abortion, high blood pressure in pregnancy (eclampsia), obstructed labour and other direct causes, accounting for an estimated 80 per cent of maternal mortality worldwide, as well as other indirect causes, Expressing deep concern that HIV infection significantly increases the risk of maternal mortality and morbidity, so that, in countries with high HIV prevalence, AIDS-related complications are one of the leading causes of maternal mortality, Acknowledging that failure to prevent maternal mortality and morbidity is among the most significant barriers to the empowerment of women and girls in all __________________ 64 10-30576 World Health Organization, The World Health Report 2005: Make Every Mother and Child Count (Geneva, 2005). 27