Our Focus
The Issue
©UNFPA/Naymuzzaman Khan
March 2023.
Progress has slowed down
Globally, progress in reducing maternal and newborn mortality and stillbirths has slowed down by over 50% since 2015.
Based on current trends, about 60 countries are at risk of missing the SDG under-5 mortality target by 2030. Even more countries – 66 – are risk of missing the neonatal mortality
target (UN IGME, 2025; EWENE, 2026- upcoming), and the global maternal mortality ratio will be two and a half times higher than SDG target 3.1 (WHO, 2025).
Every seven seconds, a woman or a baby dies due to complications in pregnancy, childbirth or the first few weeks after birth.
©UNICEF/Pietrasik
A midwife examines a woman in Madhya Pradesh, India in 2009.
This is unacceptable.
Cuts in foreign aid are hitting hard:
In 2025, total official development assistance (ODA) fell by 23.1% compared to 2024. These cuts disproportionately affect women’s and children’s capacity to seek and receive the health care they need.
Current analyses project that ongoing reductions in ODA funding could lead to an additional 5·4 million deaths among children younger than 5 years by 2030 (Lancet, 2026).
Less resources require different approaches.
Out of the 107 countries that self-reported on their progress to achieve the EWENE targets in 2025, 25% successfully mobilized domestic resources for their maternal, newborn and child health plans, to mitigate the impact of ODA cuts.
Mobilizing domestic resources, and aligning all the other funding, under government leadership is key to enable progress for maternal and newborn health and stillbirth.
Women and newborns in emergency settings are left behind
Cuts to official development assistance impact particularly women, newborns and children in humanitarian and fragile settings.
Almost two-thirds of maternal deaths (WHO, 2025) and half of all under-5 deaths (UN IGME, 2025) occurred in conflict and fragile settings in 2023 and 2024 respectively.
To reverse this trend, we need urgent investment in maternal and newborn health.
Photo © 2019 WHO / Christine McNab A pregnant woman in Nadi, present for an antenatal check-up during a primary health care outreach session in Haryana State, India, in August 2019.
The system moved (to accelerate progress for maternal and newborn health) not because the evidence changed - the evidence has been clear for decades- but because the political will acted on it and matched the scale of the problem.
– Hon. Aden Bare Duale, Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for Health, at the EWENE, CSA, UNICEF and UNFPA event hosted by Devex amd MSD during the 2028 World Health Assembly.
©WHO/Hugh Kinsella Cunningham.
Thress midwives at Kitatumba Hospital, Butembo, North Kivu, DRC.
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