Azernews.Az

Maternal mortality rate is 38 per 100,000 births in Azerbaijan, a UN agency has said in a report.

According to the UN Population Fund’s report, which looks into maternal and child mortality rates, 33 per 1,000 children in Azerbaijan die before they reach age five.

42 per 1,000 babies are delivered by mothers aged 15-19, says the State of World Population 2011 report, released on the occasion of the world’s population reaching 7 billion in a few days.

88 percent of babies are delivered by skilled medical personnel, while the remaining 12 percent – without professional medical aid and at home, the report said.

It also said 95-97 percent of children in Azerbaijan are able to receive primary and secondary education.

The South Caucasus republic’s population is expected to make up 9.3 million by the end of 2011, including 4.6mln men and 4.7mln women, according to the report.

The population growth rate in the country will be 1.2 percent in 2010-2015, the UN fund estimates.

It also said that in 2010-2015 life expectancy will be 68 years for men and 74 years for women.

Azerbaijan’s health ministry has said some data cited in the UN report was inaccurate. The ministry said on its website that some of the figures do not correspond to the state statistics body’s indicators on maternal and child mortality, which have been included in the World Health Organization’s (WHO) reports.

It said that whereas 28.2 per 1,000 babies under 12 months were dying in 1993, the figure has decreased in the past two years to 11 per 1,000 babies. As for children under age five, the number of child deaths has gone down to 4.3 per 1,000 from 44.4 per 1,000, the ministry said.

It said maternal mortality rate has more than halved to 15.7 per 100,000 births in Azerbaijan as of the end of 2010.

The ministry also noted that the number of child births at home has fallen to 2.3 percent as of 2010 as a result of public awareness activities.