By Mangoa Mosota

An expert has urged Africa to address maternal health and child deaths to spur economic growth.

Prof Thomas Burke of Harvard University, US, said if the continent fails to tackle the two issues urgently, Africa would lag behind the rest of the world.

"Africa cannot climb out of poverty if deaths of children below the age of five and expectant mothers are not drastically reduced," he said.

Added Burke: "Maternal death rate is the largest health discrepancy in the world. A study carried in South Sudan shows one of every six pregnant women die during pregnancy."

The associate professor of surgery, paediatrics and emergency medicine at the Harvard Medical School said statistics from South Sudan showed a big gap with those in many developed countries.

"For instance, in countries such as Australia, deaths of women during pregnancy is about one in every 20,000," he said.

He said the case in South Sudan was similar to many others in Africa.

Burke was speaking at Great Lakes University of Kisumu, where he gave a public lecture titled, Technologies for Lowering Healthcare Cost in Africa: Opportunities and Strategies, at the weekend.

Reduction of child deaths and improvement of maternal health are among the eight UN Millennium Development Goals set to be achieved by 2015 to better the lives of poor people.