About 68,000 women die each year in the developing world because of unsafe abortions, a new study suggests.

Another 5 million women are hospitalized for infection and other complications, say researchers who analyzed data from 13 countries in the developing world. In comparison, complications from abortion or hospitalizations are rare in developed countries.

The World Health Organization defines unsafe abortion as a procedure to end an unintended pregnancy performed by someone lacking the necessary skills or done in an environment that does not meet basic medical standards.

Susheela Singh of the Guttmacher Institute in New York and her team suggest around 19 million unsafe abortions take place in the world each year. The total includes back-street procedures as well as legal ones, the researchers said.

"The most effective way of eliminating this highly preventable cause of maternal illness and death would be to make safe and legal abortion services available and accessible," the researchers concluded in the Nov. 25 issue of the medical journal The Lancet.

"This goal is a continuing and critical priority in the developing world."

The 13 countries included in the study by region were:

• Africa: Egypt, Nigeria and Uganda.
• Asia: Bangladesh, Pakistan and the Philippines.
• Latin America and the Caribbean: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru.

The study also included some data for Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya and South Africa. 

Bangladesh had the lowest rate of hospitalizations at 2.8 per 1,000 women, while Uganda had the most with 16.4, the team reports. Egypt was next with 15.3 in public hospitals.

Numbers paint a grim picture

On average, the rate of hospital admissions was 5.7 per 1,000 women per year in all developing regions, excluding China.

"Singh’s data paint a grim picture," wrote Marge Bererk, editor of Reproductive Health Matters, in an accompanying commentary.

"The burden of injury and hospital admission are all the worse for being almost always avoidable. When legal restrictions on abortion are reduced, the rate of deaths and morbidity decreases greatly."

The researchers were funded by the pro-choice Hewlett Foundation.

The British Society for the Protection of Unborn Children called the findings "guesses extrapolated from estimates."

In a statement, the society also pointed to contradictory data from Poland, where they say maternal and infant health improved after new laws in the 1990s restricted abortion.

The Polish law allows a woman to have an abortion if her health is at serious risk, the fetus is irreparably damaged, or if the pregnancy was the result of incest or rape.