Women are still dying from giving birth. Not from rare complications, but from preventable things we’ve known how to handle for a long time.
According to the World Health Organization, every day in 2023 more than 700 women died from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. That’s about one woman every two minutes. Around 260,000 mothers in a single year. And it’s not spread evenly at all: more than 90% of those deaths happen in low- and lower-income countries. On the kid side, nearly 4.9 million children die before their fifth birthday every year, again mostly from preventable causes.
Here’s what makes it hit harder for me. Most of these deaths could be prevented with basic things like skilled help during delivery and prenatal care. The gap is access to the right care. It really comes down to where you happened to be born.
My family connects me to this in a small way. My grandmother immigrated from Brazil, and a big part of why I think about global health is knowing how different life can be depending on which country you are born in. The idea that a healthy mom and a healthy baby could be related to where they live on a map is hard to accept.
There’s real progress, though. The global maternal death rate has dropped about 40% since 2000. That proves it’s fixable. We just have to keep closing the gap, because where you’re born shouldn’t decide whether you survive being born.
The Global Pulse 