World Health Day: boosting maternal health and closing medical oxygen supply gaps

A year-long campaign designed to improve maternal and newborn health gets underway today, coinciding with World Health Day.

The World Health Organisation “Healthy beginnings, hopeful futures” campaign aims to encourage governments and the health community to ramp up efforts to end preventable maternal and newborn deaths, and prioritise women’s longer-term health and well-being.

At the same time, a new UN report, Trends in maternal mortality, shows a 40% global decline in maternal deaths between 2000 and 2023 – largely due to improved access to essential health services.

But the pace of improvement has slowed significantly since 2016, and an estimated 260,000 women died in 2023 because of complications from pregnancy or childbirth – roughly equivalent to one maternal death every two minutes. Four countries – DR Congo, Nigeria, India and Pakistan – accounted for just under half of all maternal deaths in 2023.