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Maternal health

News, comment and features on maternal health and ways to improve the health of mothers, including during pregnancy and childbirth, in the developing world

April 2024

  • A woman receives an anaesthesia injection before an emergency cesarean section at Lagos Island maternity hospital.

    ‘Pregnancy is not a disease’: why do so many women die giving birth in Nigeria?

    More than 80,000 Nigerian women died from pregnancy-related complications in 2020, a statistic activists say reflects a lack of political will to fix a broken medical system
  • A hospital worker places his hand on a glass door pierced by a bullet hole

    ‘It is simply best not to get pregnant’: women left terrified as Haiti’s maternity services collapse

    Delivering a baby was already risky, but an unprecedented surge in gang violence has forced clinics and hospitals to close
  • A woman in a pink and orange sari uses a bucket to collect water from a pond

    A common condition
    ‘Headaches, organ damage and even death’: how salty water is putting Bangladesh’s pregnant women at risk

    As rising sea levels and extreme weather contaminate drinking water sources, doctors are seeing alarming numbers of women with serious health problems including pre-eclampsia

February 2024

  • Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

    Republic of Parenthood
    Call the midwife! No matter how bad you’ve heard care can be, ‘freebirthing’ is not the answer

    Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett
    Giving birth at home without medical support is simply dangerous, says Guardian columnist Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

January 2024

  • A mobile clinic run by MSI Reproductive Choices in Uganda

    ‘Horrifying numbers’ of women and girls will die because of UK aid cuts, say MPs

    FCDO cuts hit most vulnerable hardest, report says, with girl in South Sudan more likely to die in childbirth than finish school

December 2023

  • A pregnant woman carries water home from a well dug by the ACT Alliance in Yang Kuel, a village in South Sudan's Lol State plagued by a persistent drought.

    ‘No protein please’: battling dietary myths in South Sudan

    Malnutrition in the east African country is at its highest level ever, says the UN. But part of the struggle is in overturning beliefs that have gained traction

November 2023

  • A woman in an abbaya picks her way through wreckage on a bombed street while holding a small baby

    Pregnant in Gaza with no clinics: ‘I have no idea where I will give birth’

  • President Félix Tshisekedi launches a free maternity care programme at a hospital in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, in September. The scheme is aimed at reducing maternal and infant mortality.

    DRC offers free maternity care to cut death rate among mothers and babies

October 2023

  • Four African women with small babies wait in a tent

    Climate crisis is ‘not gender neutral’: UN calls for more policy focus on women

    Only a third of countries with climate crisis plans include access to sexual, maternal and newborn health services, UNFPA report finds

September 2023

  • The image displays a cross-sectional view of female workers engaged in various construction tasks at the site. . - Maternal Center of Excellence located in the Kono region, Sierra Leone.

    ‘It is for us, who will give birth here’: the women breaking barriers to build Sierra Leone’s new maternity unit

    The state-of-the-art facility will bring huge improvements to care in the country but it is also challenging gender roles in the construction industry

August 2023

  • An elderly woman with shaved head and beaded earrings feels the bump of a pregnant woman lying on a bed

    ‘Agents of change’: Kenya’s traditional midwives help cut deaths of mothers

  • Expectant mothers in the maternity ward of a Ugandan hospital

    Hospital detentions for new mothers challenged in Ugandan court

  • A woman walks past graffiti made by feminist organisations announcing telephone lines and social networks to help women who want an abortion in Caracas in July, 2023

    Rights and freedom
    The women calling for reform of Venezuela’s severe anti-abortion laws – in pictures

  • Afghan women walk along a road at a market area in Kandahar

    Women’s health at risk from UK aid cuts, Foreign Office warned

May 2023

  • A mother with her daughter and malnourished newborn in South Sudan, one of the 81 countries where low-cost intervention could save many new lives.

    Simple measures could save 1 million babies a year, doctors plead

    ‘Silent health disaster’ across developing world could be checked by spending less than £1bn on making ordinary antenatal procedures available to all, says new analysis

April 2023

  • Qureisha Juma, 17, brings her niece Suheyba Faisal for a screening at Iftin hospital in Garissa, which is seeing a rise in patients from other areas.

    ‘From bad to worse’: drought puts Kenya’s hospitals under pressure

    New mothers at rural hospital running out of water and power tell of their struggles as health workers leave for safer areas

January 2023

  • Nadiya Hussain

    My 72-hour labour was a nightmare. But at least I had access to clean water

    Nadiya Hussain
  • Frances Foord in 2021

    Other lives
    Frances Foord obituary

December 2022

  • A woman harvests fresh tea leaves in Fort Portal, Uganda.

    Rising temperatures causing distress to foetuses, study reveals

    Climate crisis increases risks for subsistence farmers in Africa who usually work throughout pregnancy

November 2022

  • Newborn breastfeeding.

    ‘Kangaroo mother care’ best for early and low birth-weight babies, says WHO

    Premature or tiny newborns should go directly into sling worn by caregiver where possible, states latest advice
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