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Maternal mortality for 181 countries, 1980–2008

2010; Elsevier BV; Volume: 376; Issue: 9750 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/s0140-6736(10)61952-6

1474-547X

James D Shelton, Ron Gray,

Child Nutrition and Water Access

Margaret Hogan and colleagues1 attribute 61 400 of 342 900 maternal deaths, or a very substantial 18% of global maternal mortality in 2008, to HIV, using a regression model with terms for national HIV seroprevalence and a counterfactual model setting the HIV prevalence terms to zero. Their calculation relies on the proposition that the variation in maternal mortality captured by the regression terms for HIV prevalence is causally linked to HIV infection. However, this proposition is compromised if other characteristics correlated with prevalent HIV, but incompletely reflected in the model, contribute to this mortality variation.