Maternal mortality in the state of Rio de Janeiro in 2000 and 2011/Mortalidade materna no Estado do Rio de Janeiro em 2000 e 2011/Mortalidad materna en el Estado de Rio de Janeiro en 2000 y 2011

In this article, we talked about maternal death, from the analyses of the deaths of pregnant and postpartum women, occurred in the State of Rio de Janeiro in 2000 and 2011, we mainly focused the causes and analyzed the social-economic characteristics of these women. Were identified 197 maternal deaths in Rio de Janeiro State in 2000 and 164 in 2011. This value corresponded to the maternal mortality ratio (MMR) of 76.0/100,000 live births (LB) and 74.3/100,000 live births, respectively. The directly maternal death decreased, due to an increase of indirect maternal death in this period, although it remains the most frequent type. The hypertensive disorder of pregnancy persists as the leading cause of maternal death, despite its tendency to decline (RMM=20.84 in 2000 and 11.79 in 2011). The second cause is bleeding which showed a slight increase in the period (9.26 to 10.88/100,000 LB), followed by abortion and infection. It was found that the risk of maternal death increases proportionally with age, especially in the group of women over 40 years and inversely proportional to the schooling of pregnant patients. Regarding color/ethnicity, there was no change between 2000 and 2011, showing that black women have five times higher risk of death during pregnancy, delivery and postpartum period than white. As maternal death is a sentinel event, indicative of the deficient quality of health care provided to the population, it was concluded that the State of Rio de Janeiro still need to improve care during pregnancy and postpartum period, considering that maternal mortality showed very slight decrease, being still very high.