No fewer than 5, 500 women died globally from pregnancy or child birth related complications, the Kwara State Commissioner for Health, Alhaji Kayode Issa has said.

He disclosed that over 99% of the death resulting from pregnancy and child birth occurred in developing countries.

Issa made this known in Ilorin, the state capital yesterday at the official opening of the family planning week, organized by the family planning unit of the Ministry of Health in conjunction   with the Nigeria Urban Reproductive Health Initiative (NURHI).

The Commissioner emphasized the urgent need for the relevant stakeholders to find ways of preventing the death of women during child birth.

He said most countries are adopting family planning as a way of reducing maternal mortality rate by 75% by the year 2015.

He explained that with the contraceptives prevalence rate of 24.6%, unmet need 30% and intension to use 27%, there was need to expand the services in all the local government areas of the state and build up the capacity of health workers so that skilful services could be provided to the populace to complement what the state government was already doing with partners.

In his remark, the Kwara State coordinator of NUHRI, Abubakar Sadiq said the state advocacy group had done a lot of sensitization for the members of the public on the importance of family planning.