Background: Bringing down the maternal mortality ratio from 569 to 143 was the target for Bangladesh to achieve Millennium Development Goal 5, that is to reduce maternal mortality ratio by three-quarters between the years 1990-2015 but Bangladesh has achieved it up to 176 per 100000 live births by 2015. Though the achievement was good by the time period but the target as per the Millennium Development Goal 5 was not fulfilled yet and remained as a challenge for Bangladesh. For that knowing the causes of it and taking necessary steps for improving maternal health situation in Bangladesh has become essential. And so, in this article it is tried to present, analyze and interrelate recent data in such a way that the barriers could be identified easily for taking actions.

Main Text: This manuscript has prepared considering three objectives: to present the maternal health situation of Bangladesh on the basis of contemporary data, to compare the situation of Bangladesh with other South Asian countries and to identify some scopes for improving the maternal health situation of Bangladesh. A rigorous literature review has been done as a main method of data collection from some renowned journals and research reports of different national and international health organizations published from 2001 to May 2018 and tables and graphs were made according to the objectives. The data analysis explores that in the mothers' age group 35-39, Maternal Mortality Rate and Maternal Mortality Ratio both have increased by 24 and 435 respectively from the year 2001 to 2010 in Bangladesh where the maternal mortality ratio has increased nearly twice which should be a matter of great concern for Bangladesh. Besides, for some cases, maternal health situation of Bangladesh in the national level remains in a struggling situation to improve like Sri-Lanka because of the rural area backwardness, for examples antenatal care visit 1 and 4, place of delivery, presence of skilled birth attendance during delivery and for some case, all countries in South Asia have shown lower participation, take or example postpartum care for mothers.

Conclusion: This paper will be very supportive for the maternal health researchers, medical anthropologist, medical practitioners for further studies and specifically for the health-policy makers and corresponding authorities to take necessary actions for overcoming the obstacles of improving maternal health situation in Bangladesh.