PESHAWAR, July 4: Some 1,800 women out of 100,000 die of delivery or pregnancy-related complications in remote areas of the province because of poor health-care facilities, officials said.

They said the Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) had been alarmingly high in remote districts such as Shangla, Buner, Upper Dir and Lower Dir and Fata due to non-availability of trained attendants.

Increasing unhygienic conditions, unsafe delivery practices, inability of traditional birth attendants to detect high-risk pregnancies and failure of the local attendants to refer cases to tehsil and district headquarters hospitals are said to be main reasons for the high MMR.

Even in urban areas of the province, the MMR, according to officials, is 450 per 100,000 births.

They said only 19 per cent of the deliveries in Pakistan were attended by the trained and professional staff, which is the lowest in the world.

In villages, most of the cases are handled by old women and midwives, who don’t have the necessary know-how to deal with complications.

A survey shows that state-run health-care dispensaries are under-staffed, poorly equipped and have an inadequate supply of medicines.

The 1994 International Conference on Population and Development had asked the member countries to improve the maternal and child health, by promoting family planning methods and launching programmes aimed at raising awareness among people regarding sexually transmitted diseases.

However, the authorities have yet to cater to the health-care needs of those living in far-off places of the NWFP.