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Maternal mortality

News, comment and features on maternal mortality and women who die in pregnancy and childbirth in the developing world

May 2024

  • Foot of a baby visible poking out from a white blanket

    Poor foetal monitoring a leading cause of death in babies in England, review finds

    Short staffing and heavy workloads also key factors in cases where outcomes included brain damage, Care Quality Commission says

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

March 2024

  • James Bassett standing behind Charlotte with his arms around her shoulders

    ‘My child was drowning’: life and death on an English maternity ward

  • Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff

    I know I want at least one baby. But the more I learn about motherhood, the more terrifying it seems

    Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff

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

November 2023

  • pregnant girl keeping her palms in the heart shape on her belly.

    Why is pre-eclampsia still causing the deaths of mothers and their babies?

  • 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 Guardian documentary
    With Woman: the high stakes for a home-birth midwife in the US

  • With Woman: a home-birth midwife in Illinois, guides a first-time mother through her delivery

    The Guardian documentary
    With Woman: the high stakes for a home-birth midwife in the US

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

  • 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

  • Tori Bowie was 32 at the time of her death earlier this year.

    Tori Bowie’s death highlighted a devastating reality for Black women in the US

July 2023

  • Lucy Jones

    The new science of motherhood shows it’s far more transformative than western culture allows

    Lucy Jones
    Learning about the ways our bodies transform after giving birth helped me make sense of a stressful, bewildering time
  • A doctor examines a pregnant woman on 17 December 2021, in Jackson, Mississippi.

    Test approved to detect preeclampsia, leading cause of US maternal deaths

    FDA approves new test, which has been widely celebrated as a small victory in the fight to make childbirth safer in the US
  • **FILE** A March 26, 2013, Pregnancy stock photo in Sydney, Tuesday. (AAP Image/Tracey Nearmy) NO ARCHIVING

    US maternal deaths have doubled since 1999 with most among Black mothers

    The south and the midwest were hit hard, and the greatest increases were seen in Native American and Alaska Native women

April 2023

  • Black woman recovering in hospital bed

    We can’t keep denying structural racism exists in Britain

    Letter: Dr Wanda Wyporska of the Black Equity Organisation says we need a dispassionate focus on the evidence of systemic racism, as seen in the poor maternal care of Black women
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