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Every year more than half a million women die in pregnancy or childbirth, and most of those deaths occur in developing countries, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said on Friday.

In the developing world, the risk of death from complications relating to pregnancy and childbirth over the course of a woman's lifetime is one in 76, compared with one in 8,000 in the industrialized world, the agency said in a new report.

The report, entitled Progress for Children: A Report Card on Maternal Mortality, said 536,000 maternal deaths occurred worldwide in 2005, over 99 percent of them in developing countries and some 84 percent concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Hemorrhage is the most common cause of death, particularly in Africa and Asia. Other causes include infections, hypertensive disorders, complications of abortion, obstructed labor or HIV/AIDS.

According to the report, maternal mortality rates are often impacted by cultural or traditional practices that often prevent women from seeking delivery or post-partum care.

Ensuring that skilled personnel are present at all deliveries and that these personnel have access to emergency care where necessary is the most effective means of saving the lives of mothers, it said.

"The causes of maternal mortality are clear -- as are the means to combat them. Yet women continue to die unnecessarily," said Peter Salama, UNICEF's chief of health.

He said maternal mortality and child mortality "do not yet receive the attention that the scale of the problem deserves."

An additional 10 billion U.S. dollars would be needed each year to combat the problem, he told reporters in Geneva.

The report said there have been some promising areas of improvement in maternal health interventions in recent years.

Coverage of antenatal care throughout the developing world has increased by 15 percentage points in the past decade, with 75 percent of expectant mothers now receiving some antenatal care.

At the same time, many countries have boosted coverage of skilled delivery attendance.

However, the pace of progress toward reaching the Millennium Development Goal on maternal health, which calls for a 75 percent reduction in the maternal mortality ration between 1990 and 2015, has been too slow throughout the developing world and must now be accelerated if the goal is to be reached.

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