Here are the facts on maternal mortality in T&T, taken from a joint Who/Unicef/UNFPA/World Bank publication for 2008 and updated September 2010. Maternal mortality for the world: 260. That means out of every 100,000 pregnancies, 260 mothers die each year in the world. That's bad. The figure in industrialised countries is 14. The figure for our region, Latin America and the Caribbean, is 85.The maternal mortality for T&T is 55. In 2008, 11 pregnant women died in Trinidad. Not Tobago. But then Tobago has about 1,000 pregnancies a year. Trinidad has some 20,000. For comparison, Barbados's maternal mortality is 64. Guya-na's is 270. Next door, Venezuela is at 68. The worst in the world is Afghanistan: 1,400. India is at 230. Nigeria 840. USA, not surprisingly, 24. The UK, 12. Denmark, the best, five. I leave you to draw your own conclusions. I should point out however that our maternal mortality, though still not where it should be for a country with our wealth, is far better comparatively than our infant mortality, which no one seems upset about, even though it is the third worst in the Americas, surpassed only by those paragons of healthcare, Bolivia and Haiti.