Maternal mortality falls 40% worldwide, but funding cuts could reverse progress, says UN

Concerted global efforts to improve maternal healthcare mean that women are far less likely to die in childbirth than they were two decades ago, a new UN report says. But agencies have warned that the gains are already at risk because of to the recent unprecedented cuts to international aid funding.

“In the year 2000 nearly half a million women died from giving birth. The figure now in 2023 is just over a quarter of a million,” said Jenny Cresswell, a researcher at WHO’s Department of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Research and the report’s lead author. “This report presents the first time that no countries were estimated to have extremely high levels of maternal mortality.”

The report, published by the UN Maternal Mortality Estimation Inter-Agency …