UN agencies have reported that a woman dies during pregnancy or childbirth every two minutes.

According to the UN agencies report, trends in maternal mortality, revealed alarming setbacks for women’s health over recent years, as maternal deaths either increased or stagnated in nearly all regions of the world, but noted that progress is possible.

The COVID-19 pandemic may have further held back progress on maternal health, the report added.

The report tracked maternal deaths nationally, regionally, and globally from 2000 to 2020. It showed there were an estimated 287,000 maternal deaths worldwide in 2020.

The leading causes of maternal deaths are severe bleeding, high blood pressure, pregnancy-related infections, complications from unsafe abortion, and underlying conditions that can be aggravated by pregnancy (such as HIV/AIDS and malaria). These are all largely preventable and treatable with access to high-quality and respectful healthcare.

Community-centered primary health care can meet the needs of women, children, and adolescents and enable equitable access to critical services such as assisted births and pre-and postnatal care, childhood vaccinations, nutrition, and family planning.

However, underfunding of primary healthcare systems, a lack of trained healthcare workers and weak supply chains for medical products are threatening progress.

The World Health Organization (WHO) chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, “While pregnancy should be a time of immense hope and a positive experience for all women, it is tragically still a shockingly dangerous experience for millions around the world who lack access to high quality, respectful health care”.

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