KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Women worldwide need better health care, including access to contraception and safe abortions, to curb more than 500,000 pregnancy-related deaths each year, health experts said Monday.

Maternal mortality primarily hits the poor in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, but studies show that nearly three-quarters of deaths could be avoided, said the London-based International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics in its report on women's health that comes out every three years.

"The global record in preventing these deaths is a disaster," Dorothy Shaw, the federation's president elect, said at a conference of 8,000 maternal health experts from 130 countries.

"One woman somewhere in the world dies every minute from a cause related to pregnancy and childbirth, mostly in developing countries," Shaw told a news conference in Kuala Lumpur.

The most common cause of maternal deaths is excessive postpartum bleeding, which is believed to occur in up to 20 per cent of all deliveries, but mainly kills malnourished, unhealthy women who cannot afford well-equipped hospitals, the federation's report said.

Another leading cause is unsafe abortions, which kill nearly 70,000 women a year and injures numerous others, often because of hemorrhage, infections and poisoning from substances used to induce the procedure, according to statistics presented at the conference.

About 46 million abortions are performed yearly, but the World Health Organization estimates nearly 20 million of them are unsafe. There are some 70 nations, mostly in the developing world, where abortion is banned or permitted only to save the woman's life.

"It's an emotional debate that demands a global response from the medical community," said Barbara Crane, vice president of Ipas, a US-based research group on women's sexual rights.

Crane said safe abortion services have seen setbacks in Nicaragua, where Congress voted to ban all abortions last month, and Poland, where lawmakers have debated a proposed constitutional amendment that could open the way for tightening already restrictive abortion laws.

The federation's report also called for curtailing unintended pregnancies by improving access to contraception, including the morning-after pill that helps prevent a pregnancy within 72 hours of sex but is not offered in public services and hospitals in many countries.

Only 16 out of 38 African countries and 10 of 24 Asian countries are known to include emergency contraception in their national guidelines for family planning, the report noted, adding that conservative religious attitudes and legal opposition were among the obstacles.