Maternal mortality as entirely preventable

UNICEF has published its report "The State of the World's Children 2009". The report's webpage says that one in seven women in Niger die during childbirth in their lifetime. That much is well-known; the statistic that in Ireland, the figure is only one in 48,000 is what caught my attention. I didn't know that maternal mortality is entirely preventable, like polio or smallpox, and has been prevented in a fairly rich European country. I thought it might be more persistent.