Maternal mortality in the UK is the highest for decades - as a barometer for a nation’s health, this is a statistic we cannot ignore
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Planned early delivery is a key component of reducing child and maternal mortality.
Maternal death rates are higher in the U.S. than in other high-income countries.
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Black women died during or soon after pregnancy at higher rates than any other racial group in every year from 1999 to 2019. American Indian and Alaska Native women had the greatest increase in risk during this period.
Maternal and infant health crises are growing worse in the U.S.
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A March of Dimes report gave the US a grade of D+ for maternal and infant health care, highlighting that the national preterm birth rate hit 10.5% in 2021, a record 15-year high.
A premature infant receives care at Koidu Government Hospital in Kono, Sierra Leone.
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The last decade has seen no measurable change in global preterm birth rates in any region of the world.
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Kenya’s experienced fast population growth and urbanisation - this has brought about some big challenges.
Poorer maternity care may be one explanation.
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A recent report found that black women are four times more likely to die while pregnant or just after childbirth, compared with white women.
According to the CDC’s latest numbers, 65% of pregancy-related deaths occur in the first year following childbirth.
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Many of the preventable pregnancy-related deaths documented by the CDC are directly attributable to failures and barriers in the maternal care system.
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If maternal mortality is an important indicator of how a health system is performing, this is damning news for the NHS.
One of the first babies born in the year 2020 on 1 January 2020 in Lagos, Nigeria.
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The factors associated with death in mother and baby included low education in the mother, lack of antenatal care, referral from another facility.
In an ectopic pregnancy, when the growing embryo causes a uterine tube rupture like the one in this micrograph, the patient could die from internal bleeding or infection without emergency surgery.
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Treating a potentially deadly pregnancy complication gets caught up in the abortion debate. A nurse-midwife explains why it shouldn’t.
Maternal care should be respectful and dignified.
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For every maternal death, there are about an additional 20 women who suffer serious injuries, infections and disabilities related to pregnancy.
Maternal mortality is still major concern in sub-Saharan Africa.
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There is growing evidence that when poor-quality oxytocin is used, it fails to prevent post-partum haemorrhage.
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Black women are four times more likely to die when childbearing than white women.
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High quality antenatal care can improve maternal health in West and Central Africa by identifying and addressing underlying problems that can cause pregnancy complications.
A heavily pregnant woman collects firewood in the Malambo district of Ngorongoro, Tanzania.
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Even though the spouse escort policy carries good intentions, we found during our study that it constituted a barrier to care in numerous ways.
Morningstar Mercredi, pictured on November 16, 2018, woke up from a surgery at 14 and discovered her developing baby was gone. What remained was an incision from her panty line to her belly button, cut without her permission.
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Recent revelations of the coerced sterilization of Indigenous women in Canada are part of a long, complex and disturbing history – in which feminism became a fight to keep one’s own children.
A clinic in northern Tanzania which has one of the lowest facility birth rates in the country.
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Tanzania would like more than 80%of births to be overseen by skilled health care providers
In this 2012 photo, a midwife holds a newborn baby boy she has just delivered by flashlight in Guinea-Bissau. The African country is one of the deadliest places in the world to give birth, with a high rate of maternal death.
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It’s not just women in impoverished countries dying in childbirth. The maternal death rate in both Canada and the U.S. has risen, particularly among Indigenous and African-American women.
Kenya’s pregnancy policy hasn’t addressed the inequalities between rich and poor.
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Free maternal services introduced in Kenya in 2013 had the immediate impact of increasing access. But it exposed a divide in which the richest 20% of women were the biggest beneficiaries.