Health
Nigeria’s disturbing maternal deaths
By Punch Editorial Board
IN Nigeria, pregnancy and childbirth remain perilously close to a death sentence for far too many women. Beyond a healthcare system failure, this is a national disgrace.
A new Federal Government report says Nigeria accounts for a disproportionately high share of global maternal deaths. With only about 2.9 per cent of the world’s population, Nigeria reportedly accounts for almost 40 per cent of global maternal deaths, according to the latest figures cited by the authorities and international health agencies. The disparity is indefensible.
Women and children constitute a significant proportion of Nigeria’s most vulnerable population. Yet the country continues to preside over a maternal-health crisis that should have been substantially brought under control decades ago.
Nigeria is estimated to record about 75,000 maternal deaths annually, with a maternal mortality ratio of 1,047 deaths per 100,000 live births.
These are not merely statistics. Each number represents a mother, a family shattered and, often, children left without the care of the woman who gave them life.
Even more disturbing is the apparent deterioration in Nigeria’s share of the global maternal-death burden. After hovering around 28 to 29 per cent in recent years, the figure has reportedly surged to about 39 per cent this year.
If the trend is not urgently reversed, Nigeria risks becoming an even greater outlier in a crisis that the rest of the world has been steadily reducing.
A September 2026 Primary Health Care Operational Capacity Report by Orodata Science, released around the same time as the Federal Government’s account, provides a grim picture of the state of primary healthcare.
The report, which examined 1,480 facilities across 277 local government councils in 16 states, found that 97 per cent of the primary healthcare centres assessed failed to meet national minimum staffing requirements.
Worse, 11 of the 16 states surveyed reportedly had no facility meeting the required standard, while 75 per cent of the facilities lacked neonatal resuscitation equipment needed to respond to emergency childbirth complications.
The findings are consistent with the wider picture of Nigeria’s decrepit primary healthcare system. BMJ Global Health has reported that although PHCs account for about 85.3 per cent of Nigeria’s hospitals and clinics and serve roughly 70 per cent of the population, only about 20 per cent are functional.
That is the foundation on which Nigeria expects women to safely give birth.
The Federal Government deserves recognition for its latest intervention. On September 14, the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, through the Maternal and Neonatal Mortality Reduction Innovation Initiative, distributed 215,000 MAMA kits, 40,000 maternal food-support packs and 40,000 newborn clothing sets to indigent women and families.
The stated objective is to increase antenatal, delivery and postnatal care among vulnerable women, with the government promising to extend the distribution to additional local government areas recording low uptake of maternal and neonatal services.
The First Lady, Oluremi Tinubu, said the initiative represented another step towards ensuring that every Nigerian child had a healthy start in life and that no woman lost her life while giving birth. She noted that the latest 215,000 MAMA kits represented an addition to the 110,000 distributed in 2025.
The Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Ali Pate, said the government was targeting a 30 per cent reduction in maternal mortality and a 20 per cent reduction in newborn mortality by 2028, while reaching approximately 2.9 million pregnant women and families.
These are worthwhile objectives. But Nigeria has heard lofty promises on maternal healthcare before.
The real test will not be the fanfare surrounding the launch of another initiative. It will be whether the programme survives the familiar Nigerian cycle of launch, publicity, ribbon-cutting and abandonment.
Previous interventions provide ample reason for caution. The Federal Government’s 2017 flag-off of the revitalisation of 10,000 PHCs across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, for instance, became closely associated with renovating physical structures. But buildings alone cannot deliver babies safely.
Without potable water, electricity, trained personnel, equipment, essential medicines and reliable referral systems, a freshly painted health centre is little more than a monument to misplaced priorities.
The same concern hangs over the Federal Government’s November 2024 launch of the Maternal Mortality Reduction Innovation Initiative, designed in part to expand access to Caesarean sections in public hospitals. Good policy on paper means little to a woman who arrives at a hospital in labour only to be told that there is no doctor, no blood, no electricity, no operating theatre or no money to pay.
The government’s renewed enthusiasm must therefore be matched by money, personnel and relentless implementation.
Experts at the 2026 Maternal Health Roundtable organised by Nigeria Health Watch in Abuja estimated that Nigeria needs N3.68 trillion to reduce maternal deaths by 30 per cent by 2027.
Nigeria must find the money.
Indeed, the country’s neglect of health sector funding is particularly disturbing. Pate disclosed that of the N218 billion capital allocation appropriated to his ministry in 2025, only N36 million was released.
Such a funding gap renders official promises almost meaningless. Government cannot declare war on maternal mortality while starving the institutions expected to fight it.
The consequences are predictable.
Pregnant women who cannot afford hospital care are pushed towards chemists, unqualified practitioners, churches, traditional birth attendants and other unconventional facilities. In many rural communities, distance, transport costs and the absence of functioning PHCs make professional maternal care inaccessible until complications have become life-threatening.
It is estimated that about 59 per cent of births take place at home, while only 39 per cent occur in health facilities, with a mere 43 per cent benefiting from trained midwives or nurses.
This is how preventable deaths become routine.
Nigeria’s rural population bears a disproportionate share of this burden. In communities characterised by poverty, inadequate roads, poor sanitation, unreliable electricity, unsafe water and limited access to health facilities, a pregnancy that should ordinarily culminate in a safe delivery can quickly become an emergency.
The PHCs that should be the first line of defence have themselves become victims of institutional neglect. Inadequate staffing, obsolete equipment, corruption, poor supervision and insufficient funding from the three tiers of government combine to reduce them to hollow shells.
Every Nigerian community deserves a functional primary healthcare centre, not just a building with a signboard. A functioning centre must have qualified health workers, drugs, electricity, water, basic diagnostic capacity, maternal and neonatal equipment and a dependable emergency referral system.
The three tiers of government must stop treating primary healthcare as an orphaned responsibility.
There is a Nigerian example that proves the situation can be changed.
When maternal mortality was ravaging Ondo State, the administration of the then governor, Olusegun Mimiko, declared that pregnancy would “no longer be a death sentence” in the state. It subsequently established the Safe Motherhood Project, popularly known as the Abiye Project, providing free and better-supported maternal healthcare to expectant mothers.
The programme significantly reduced maternal fatalities and earned international recognition.
Nigeria does not lack examples of what works. What it lacks is the political and financial commitment to replicate, institutionalise and sustain what works.
The international comparison is even more damning. The WHO estimates maternal mortality in high-income countries at roughly 10 to 16 deaths per 100,000 live births. Countries such as Belarus, Poland and Norway have reported rates of fewer than two deaths per 100,000.
That gap should embarrass every level of government.
Cuba offers another lesson in the importance of community-based healthcare. Its public health system places considerable emphasis on preventive and primary care, including neighbourhood-based family doctor-and-nurse teams. Nigeria can learn from the principle that healthcare works better when it reaches people in their communities before illness becomes an emergency.
Nigeria’s maternal mortality crisis will not be solved by distributing maternity kits alone. Food support is useful. Awareness campaigns are necessary. Caesarean access is vital. But these interventions must sit within a functioning health system.
Traditional rulers, religious organisations, corporate bodies, philanthropists and development partners also have important roles to play. So does public education. But awareness without access is another cruel joke.
The ultimate measure of success should be fewer Nigerian women dying while giving birth.
Nigeria cannot continue to account for two of five maternal deaths globally while congratulating itself on incremental interventions.
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