(e.g., more academic or more urgent/activist).

Strengthening the nursing and midwifery workforce is the fastest way to improve birth outcomes.

Essential services like emergency obstetric care and family planning remain inaccessible to the most vulnerable populations.

COVID-19 severely disrupted maternal health services, diverting funding and personnel away from prenatal and postnatal care.

The stagnation is not the result of a single failure but a convergence of systemic collapses.

Progress on reducing maternal mortality has stalled since 2015, marking a sobering halt to decades of global health advancement. Between 2000 and 2015, the world saw significant strides in making childbirth safer, driven by the Millennium Development Goals. However, the transition to the Sustainable Development Goals has been met with stagnation, and in some regions, a terrifying reversal of trends. The Numbers Behind the Crisis