United Nations, New York – An average of 712 women die every day during pregnancy or childbirth – one woman every two minutes. The report, released today, discovered a staggering 260,000 women died in 2023.
Almost all of these deaths were preventable. Coupled with increasingly sexual and reproductive rights women, medical advances in providing respectful and skilled birth care make pregnancy and childbirth safer than at any point in history. So why are so many women and girls dying while giving life?
“The death of a mother is not a medical mystery. They are global injustice,” said Dr. Natalia Kanem, executive director of UNFPA.
Progress, but not for everything
In particular, the most recent estimates represent a significant -40% decline from 443,000 mother deaths that occurred in 2000. Maternal deaths surged at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, and these mortality rates were thankfully recalled. However, the world remains far from the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which reduces the mortality rate of 70 per 100,000 births by 2030. In fact, the current reduction rate is around 2% per year. Maternal deaths need to approach 15% each year to achieve globally agreed goals.
One core problem is that progress is extremely unequal and in some countries it has even turned it around.
In 2023, the poorest countries accounted for more than 43% of all mother deaths due to a lack of qualified care. Furthermore, the most vulnerable pregnant women and girls live in vulnerable, conflict-affected environments. Thirty-seven countries suffering from violence and vulnerability accounted for 61% of all mother deaths in 2023.
Frontline healthcare workers have long been warnings about the risk of giving birth in these types of environments. In Al Jazira, a midwife named Awatef in Sudan told UNFPA that four women helped save the baby while escaping the violence.
One woman, Amina, had to give birth by caesarean section on the floor of a stranger’s house where local doctors are helping deliver. “I had to start walking again after just six hours. I was carrying the baby while my wounds were still fresh and painful,” she said.
Discrimination and unequal access by location, income, race, or ethnicity deprives women of both sexual and reproductive choices and appropriate maternal care. This is also the case in the wealthiest countries with high health standards. So, maternal mortality is concentrated on the most marginalized.
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Skilled Healthcare Rights
However, there are affordable and effective solutions. The initiative launched today highlights that more than three-thirds of all mothers and newborn deaths and stillbirths can be avoided by quality midwife care. Still, the chronic global shortage of 900,000 midwives remains.
Filling this gap will not only save lives, but will be cost-effective. Every dollar invested in a midwife will bring up to 16 times the return on economic and social benefits, experts have long pointed out.
UNFPA has seen the transformational power of midwives that played an important role in reducing mother deaths by more than 50% in the United Republic of Tanzania. However, as massive global funding cuts threaten essential services, such benefits are vulnerable and difficult risks derail.
Today’s initiatives – UNFPA, International Union of Midwives (ICM), Jhpiego, Unicef, and Who are the “midwifery accelerators,” a roadmap for training more midwives, deploying where they are most needed, ensuring they are equipped, supported and integrated into the national health system.
“Let’s prioritize investments to reach preventable maternal deaths,” Dr. Kanem said in a statement. “Let us promise to build a healthier, fairer society and ensure that all women who bring this world to life will survive childbirth and then thrive.”
