Maternal, Newborn, & Child Health

Every year, more than half a million women die and many more suffer complications from childbirth.

• Most of these women are in developing countries. Their deaths during pregnancy and childbirth illustrate the widest gap in health between the developing and the developed world.
• A woman in Africa, for example, has a one-in-26 risk of maternal death, compared to one in 7,300 in more developed regions.
• Death and disability among mothers greatly affects the health and well-being of their children.

Nearly 10 million children die each year from related health problems.

• Four million of these deaths occur in the first four weeks of life from a handful of causes, such as pre-term births, severe infections, and asphyxia.
• Many young children die from diarrhea, pneumonia, and malaria despite the fact that we already know how to prevent or treat these conditions.
• Poor nutrition is an underlying cause for many of these deaths.

Women and children could be saved if they had access to existing treatment and prevention strategies.

When women have access to skilled care during pregnancy and childbirth, their chances of survival increase and their children's survival rate improves. However, roughly half of women in developing countries give birth without access to appropriate care and a skilled attendant.

We're working to improve access to prevention and care that can save many of these lives.

Next: Our Approach

We’re currently developing the following strategies, which we believe will have the greatest potential to save the lives of mothers and children in the developing world:

Improve care during pregnancy and delivery.

We can save lives by providing pregnant women with greater access to known solutions that can prevent and treat the most common killers during pregnancy and delivery: high blood pressure, infection, uncontrolled bleeding, and obstructed labor. These solutions include prenatal care for pregnant women and access to skilled care during delivery.

Improve newborn care.

Many of the strategies and treatments that address the survival of babies also benefit mothers. Helping mothers in childbirth and providing care immediately after birth reduces newborn deaths. We’re supporting efforts to take on the major killers of newborns—serious infections and complications of prematurity and birth asphyxia—as well as the main causes of stillbirths.

Improve health care for children under 2.

The first two years of life are a critical time for a child's health. We’re working to prevent children’s deaths from critical conditions that affect populations in the developing world: pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria, and poor nutrition. We work across the foundation on these strategies.

Research, document, and promote the effects of the work.

We’re working to find out what rapidly reduces maternal, newborn, and child death; what doesn't work; and why. We’re supporting research to help improve understanding of the issues and which strategies and treatments are most effective.

Advocate for more attention to the health of women, babies, and children.

By making the public, policy makers, and world leaders more aware of the problems women, babies, and children face, we hope to gather their support for solutions. We’re engaged in efforts to increase the focus on maternal child health issues, and increase access to policies and strategies for developing new ways to save lives.