How Many Women Die in Childbirth Every Day
Around 260,000 women die from pregnancy and childbirth each year, about 712 a day. Where it happens, what causes it, and why most deaths are preventable.
Picture a district hospital somewhere in rural West Africa, late in the evening. A young woman has just given birth to her second child after a long labour. The baby is crying, which is a good sign. The midwife is tired; she has been on shift since the morning and there is only one of her. Then she notices the bleeding has not stopped. It is heavier than it should be, and it is not slowing down.
What happens in the next hour depends almost entirely on what is in that room. A dose of oxytocin to help the womb contract. A drug called tranexamic acid. A second pair of trained hands. A bag of blood, if the hospital has one. With those things, she will very likely go home with her baby in a few days. Without them, she may not live until morning.
Severe bleeding after birth is the single biggest cause of maternal death in the world. And this is the hardest fact about maternal deaths: almost all of them are preventable with care that has existed for decades.
The headline number
The World Health Organization and its UN partners estimate that around 260,000 women died from complications of pregnancy and childbirth in 2023, the most recent year in their global report published in 2025. That works out to around 712 deaths every day, or roughly one every two minutes.
You can see how this fits into the full picture of global deaths on our live death counter, and follow a running count on our maternal mortality page.
| Time period | Maternal deaths (approx.) |
|---|---|
| Per minute | 0.5 |
| Per hour | 30 |
| Per day | 712 |
| Per week | 5,000 |
| Per month | 21,700 |
| Per year | 260,000 |
You may still see older figures quoted elsewhere, such as WHO's previous estimate of around 287,000 deaths in 2020. The newer figure, which our maternal mortality page now uses, reflects real progress since then, but it also shows how slow that progress has been.
A maternal death is defined as the death of a woman during pregnancy or within 42 days of the end of a pregnancy, from any cause related to or made worse by the pregnancy, but not from accidents. It includes deaths in labour, deaths from complications in the weeks after birth, and deaths from unsafe abortion.
Progress, then a stall
There is real good news in the long-term numbers. Since 2000, the number of women dying in pregnancy and childbirth has fallen by around 40%.
| Year | Estimated maternal deaths worldwide | Maternal mortality ratio (deaths per 100,000 live births) |
|---|---|---|
| 2000 | ~443,000 | ~328 |
| 2010 | ~350,000 | ~250 |
| 2015 | ~300,000 | ~220 |
| 2020 | ~287,000 | ~223 |
| 2023 | ~260,000 | ~197 |
Most of that improvement came before 2015. After that, progress slowed sharply, and the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted health services in many countries. The UN's Sustainable Development Goal is to cut the global maternal mortality ratio below 70 deaths per 100,000 live births by 2030. At current rates, the world will miss that target by a long way. WHO and UNICEF have also warned that cuts to international aid in 2025 put many maternal health programmes at risk.
Where women are dying
Maternal death is one of the most unequal statistics on earth. A woman's chance of dying in pregnancy depends far more on where she lives than on anything about her own health.
| Region | Approx. share of global maternal deaths |
|---|---|
| Sub-Saharan Africa | ~70% |
| Southern Asia | ~17% |
| Rest of the world combined | ~13% |
Around 70% of all maternal deaths happen in sub-Saharan Africa, which has well under a fifth of the world's births. A single country, Nigeria, accounted for more than a quarter of all maternal deaths worldwide in 2023, according to the WHO-led estimates: roughly 75,000 women in a year, or about 200 a day. Other high-burden countries include India, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Pakistan.
The gap in lifetime risk is even more striking than the totals. A girl who is 15 today in sub-Saharan Africa faces around a 1 in 40 chance of eventually dying from a maternal cause, according to earlier UN estimates. In Europe or Australia and New Zealand, the lifetime risk is measured in the thousands: around 1 in 5,000 or less. In countries affected by war and crisis, such as South Sudan, Chad and Somalia, the risks are higher still.
What causes maternal deaths
The most widely used breakdown comes from a WHO-led systematic analysis published in The Lancet Global Health. The proportions shift a little between studies, but the pattern has been consistent for years.
| Cause | Approx. share of maternal deaths | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Severe bleeding (haemorrhage) | ~27% | Mostly heavy bleeding after birth |
| Pre-existing conditions made worse by pregnancy | ~28% | Including HIV, malaria, heart disease and diabetes |
| High blood pressure disorders | ~14% | Pre-eclampsia and eclampsia |
| Infection (sepsis) | ~11% | Often after birth or a complicated delivery |
| Unsafe abortion | ~8% | Complications from unsafe procedures |
| Blood clots (embolism) | ~3% | More common in high-income countries |
| Other direct causes | ~9% | Including obstructed labour |
Two things stand out. First, bleeding, high blood pressure and infection, which together account for around half of all maternal deaths, all have well-known and inexpensive treatments. Second, more than a quarter of maternal deaths are among women whose pregnancy made an existing illness worse. In parts of Africa, malaria and HIV play a big role here. Infections after birth link closely to sepsis, one of the most underestimated killers in the world.
Why most of these deaths are preventable
The treatments for the main causes of maternal death are not new, not experimental and mostly not expensive.
| Problem | Proven intervention |
|---|---|
| Bleeding after birth | Oxytocin to contract the womb, tranexamic acid, early detection, blood transfusion |
| Pre-eclampsia and eclampsia | Blood pressure monitoring, magnesium sulfate to prevent seizures, timely delivery |
| Infection | Clean births, antibiotics, hand hygiene |
| Obstructed labour | A skilled birth attendant and access to a caesarean section |
| Unsafe abortion | Access to safe, legal services and post-abortion care |
| Anaemia | Iron and folic acid in pregnancy |
The difference between life and death usually comes down to what researchers call the "three delays": delay in deciding to seek care, delay in reaching a health facility, and delay in getting the right treatment once there. A woman bleeding heavily after birth can die within hours. If the nearest hospital is a day's walk away, or the clinic has no midwife, no drugs and no blood, the treatments might as well not exist.
New research keeps adding to the toolkit. The E-MOTIVE trial, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2023, tested a simple bundle: measuring blood loss with a calibrated drape under the mother, and then giving a set of standard treatments quickly if bleeding passed a threshold. In hospitals across Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania, it cut severe bleeding, surgery and death from bleeding by around 60%. WHO has since built it into its recommendations.
Maternal deaths in the UK
In the UK, maternal death is rare, but it has been creeping upwards. MBRRACE-UK, which investigates every maternal death in the UK and Ireland, reported a maternal death rate of around 13 per 100,000 maternities for 2020 to 2022, the highest in about 20 years. Even excluding deaths from COVID-19, the rate had risen.
| UK maternal deaths (MBRRACE-UK, 2020 to 2022) | Figure |
|---|---|
| Women who died during or up to 6 weeks after pregnancy | ~290 over three years |
| Rate per 100,000 maternities | ~13 |
| Leading cause | Blood clots (thrombosis and thromboembolism) |
| Increased risk for Black women | Around three times the rate of white women |
| Increased risk for Asian women | Around twice the rate of white women |
That is around two women a week in the United Kingdom, a small number in a country with around 700,000 births a year, but each one investigated because each one was considered potentially avoidable. The ethnic disparity has been one of the most persistent findings in MBRRACE reports for over a decade.
Maternal deaths in the US
The United States has the highest maternal mortality rate of any wealthy country. According to the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, there were 669 maternal deaths in 2023, a rate of about 18.7 per 100,000 live births. That was down from a pandemic peak of more than 1,200 deaths in 2021, but still several times higher than in most of Western Europe.
| Country | Approx. maternal mortality ratio (per 100,000 live births) |
|---|---|
| Norway, Sweden, Japan | Under 5 |
| United Kingdom | ~10 to 13 |
| United States | ~19 |
| India | ~80 to 100 |
| Nigeria | ~990 |
These are rounded from WHO and national data; exact figures differ between sources and years. In the US, Black women die at around three times the rate of white women, and CDC investigations have repeatedly concluded that more than 80% of pregnancy-related deaths are preventable.
Mothers and babies are linked
Maternal deaths rarely happen alone. When a mother dies, the chances that her newborn will also die rise sharply, and the same gaps in care (no skilled attendant, no emergency transport, no clean delivery room) drive deaths among mothers and babies alike. Around 2.3 million babies die in their first month each year, which we cover in how many newborn babies die every day. The wider picture of child deaths is in how many children die every day and on our neonatal causes page.
Maternal health is also one of the clearest examples of how income affects life expectancy. The richest countries have almost eliminated it as a cause of death. The poorest countries still lose hundreds of women every day. You can see how it ranks against the other leading killers of women in the leading causes of death in women.
While you were reading this
You have spent about 12 minutes with this article. In that time, roughly six women around the world have died from complications of pregnancy or childbirth. Most of them were in sub-Saharan Africa or South Asia. Many of them had just given birth. Almost all of them could have lived with a skilled midwife, a few cheap medicines and a way to reach a hospital in time.
You can see the full picture of global deaths on our live death counter and the deaths today page, and follow the running count on the maternal mortality page.
Few statistics on this site are as clearly a choice as this one. The knowledge exists, the medicines exist, and dozens of countries have already shown that maternal death can become rare. What is left is the distance between that knowledge and the women who still need it.
Data sources: World Health Organization, UNICEF, UNFPA, World Bank Group and UN Population Division (Trends in maternal mortality 2000 to 2023, published 2025; earlier editions for historic and lifetime risk figures), Say et al. (The Lancet Global Health, 2014), Gallos et al. E-MOTIVE trial (New England Journal of Medicine, 2023), MBRRACE-UK Saving Lives, Improving Mothers' Care reports, CDC National Center for Health Statistics. Figures are rounded and represent the most recent available estimates; daily and hourly figures are derived from annual totals. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. If you are pregnant and worried about any symptoms, contact your midwife, GP or maternity unit straight away.
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