The United Nations Population Fund (UNPFA) has said about 145 Nigerian women die every day from complications during pregnancy, the Punch newspaper reported Monday.
It also stated that unsafe sex has become the second highest cause of diseases and deaths among people in the poorest countries of the world.
The UNFPA said this in its Reproductive Health and Sexual Rights report issued in Abuja, capital of Nigeria, on Sunday.
The report said the burden of disability and premature deaths due to sexual and reproductive health issues is becoming too enormous to be ignored by the governments and individuals around the world.
According to the report, a majority of the deaths occur due to loss of blood, obstructed labor, unsafe abortion, hypertensive disease, and sepsis.
The report also said that 15 percent of all pregnant women experience potentially life threatening complications, while most maternal deaths take place during labor, delivery, or in the immediate post-partum period.
According to UNFPA, pregnancy-related complications have killed more than half a million women every year globally, leaving over 210 million with disabilities, including obstetric fistula.
It disclosed that in Nigeria, over 52,000 women die from these complications a year which means that about 145 of them die in a day.
Equally dangerous is the issue of unsafe sex, which is the second most important cause of disease and deaths among the world's poorest population, it said.
Meanwhile, the UNFPA has identified 13 states it is going to work with in Nigeria during the next phase of its Country Program, starting in January 2009.