More than 700 women and adolescent girls die each day around the world from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. Bringing this number down to zero is one of the three transformative results at the heart of UNFPA’s mission.
In Uzbekistan, government-led reforms supported by UNFPA have helped steadily reduce the overall maternal mortality ratio from 21 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2010 to 14.7 in 2024. Encouraging progress has also been made in lowering the proportion of maternal deaths from preventable causes, like haemorrhagia, eclampsia and sepsis, though continued efforts are needed to accelerate these gains.
That led UNFPA and the Ministry of Health to launch a data-driven campaign, which used the analysis of maternal deaths, health facility data and national trends to identify and address factors related to preventable maternal deaths. Within a single year, the share of preventable maternal deaths fell sharply to 62.8 per cent, according to the Ministry of Health. This represents a reduction of 16 percentage points and demonstrates the positive impact of interventions conducted by UNFPA.
A multi-layered response to prevent maternal deaths
Health workers in Uzbekistan perform over 900,000 births annually and serve approximately 9 million women of reproductive age. While substantial advances have been made, continued efforts are under way to further strengthen clinical care, referral systems and emergency response capacity, and to modernize the healthcare infrastructure, ensuring equitable access to quality maternal health services across all regions, particularly underserved and hard to reach areas.
In partnership with the Ministry of Health, UNFPA has provided modern life-saving obstetric equipment to all 231 maternal hospitals across the 14 regions of Uzbekistan. With the introduction of the Vision 2030 Restitution Fund, UNFPA further scaled up its support to ensure safe pregnancy and deliveries.
More than 18,000 healthcare providers working in maternal hospitals and primary health facilities strengthened their capacity for emergency obstetric and neonatal care, reproductive health services, family planning and population health counselling through intensive training and supportive supervision visits jointly organized by UNFPA and the Ministry of Health.
Beyond hospital walls, UNFPA also reached into communities to increase awareness about the availability and need for quality maternal health services, especially the importance of antenatal care to safe deliveries and motherhood. Through a joint effort with UNICEF, over 10 million people received information promoting health literacy and seeking out timely care.
As a result of these multi-layered efforts at the national and local levels, lives were saved.
24-year-old Gulirano experienced this difference first-hand. After giving birth to her daughter at the maternity hospital in Tashkent, she suffered a postpartum haemorrhage. Severe bleeding after childbirth is the leading cause of maternal death worldwide. But thanks to the newly-delivered obstetric equipment at the hospital and the fast response of her medical team, Gulirano and her baby survived.
“I was given anesthesia and do not recall the exact medical details, but I remember how swiftly they acted to start the procedure,” she said. “Those crucial minutes saved my life.”
Maintaining momentum for the future
The success in Uzbekistan demonstrates that maternal health requires system-wide readiness, quality and inclusion.
The gains made in preventing maternal deaths were achieved through an integrated strategy that addressed infrastructure quality, workforce capacity and community engagement. As Uzbekistan looks to the future, the goal is to ensure this progress is sustained until no woman or girl loses her life to a cause that could have been prevented.
