Global Maternal Deaths Have Fallen 40% Since 2000, UN Report Finds

Childbirth has long been one of the most dangerous moments in a woman's life, but a global report released on 7 April 2025 documents how much safer it has become. The UN's Trends in Maternal Mortality report — produced by WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA, the World Bank Group and the UN population division — found that maternal deaths worldwide fell by about 40% between 2000 and 2023.

Behind that percentage are vast numbers of lives. The maternal mortality ratio dropped from 328 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in 2000 to 197 in 2023, a decline driven by wider access to skilled birth attendants, emergency obstetric care, family planning and treatment for complications such as hemorrhage and high blood pressure. Some regions made extraordinary strides: eastern Europe cut its ratio by 75% and southern Asia by 71% over the period.

“The UN's Trends in Maternal Mortality report — produced by WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA, the World Bank Group and the UN population division — found that maternal deaths worldwide fell by about 40% between 2000 and 2023.”

The progress is uneven, and the report does not shy away from that. An estimated 260,000 women still died from pregnancy or childbirth complications in 2023 — roughly one every two minutes — and sub-Saharan Africa accounts for the majority of those deaths. The pace of improvement has slowed since 2016, and UN agencies warned that cuts to global health funding now threaten the fragile gains. "Access to quality maternal health services is a right, not a privilege," said UNFPA Executive Director Dr Natalia Kanem, while UNICEF's Catherine Russell cautioned that funding cuts "are putting more pregnant women at risk."

The realistic message is one of hard-won progress that must be protected. As WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus noted, "solutions exist to prevent and treat the complications that cause the vast majority of maternal deaths" — meaning these deaths are largely preventable when care is available. A 40% reduction over a generation shows what sustained investment in women's health can achieve, and serves as both a celebration of millions of mothers who survived and a reminder of how much further the world can still go.