Hard-won success in efforts to stop women and babies dying in childbirth have faced a serious setback with recent cuts to foreign aid – with the trend now reversing in some countries, new figures show.
Significant progress in tackling preventable maternal mortality across the globe had seen the rate decline by 40 per cent in the last two decades.
However, the latest data from the World Health Organisation (WHO) suggests this progress has slowed in recent years and recent aid cuts by the US and other countries will start to reverse those crucial gains.
With Donald Trump in particular slashing America’s foreign assistance programmes by 57 per cent last year, global aid fell by 23 per cent in 2025 compared to 2024, and is projected to drop by a further 5.8 per cent in 2026.
Maternal mortality is particularly acute in parts of Africa, and is already playing out in the Central African Republic, which has the second highest rate of neonatal deaths globally, according to the UN.
Along its border with Sudan, where a civil war has entered its fourth year, severe aid cuts have caused midwives to lose their jobs, mobile maternal clinics to close and medicines to run out, despite the need being greater than ever because of an influx of refugees.
Busayna, 25, who fled massacres in Darfur on foot after militants murdered her husband, told The Independent she nearly died a few months ago while giving birth to her fifth child. She had no money or food and she had to walk to the nearest clinic while in labour.
According to the WHO, the average annual decline in global maternal mortality rate was 1.5 per cent between 2013 and 2023, a figure significantly below the 2.6 per cent recorded between 2000 and 2010, even before the slashing of billions of pounds from global aid.
The benchmark is the UN Sustainable Development Goal, laid out in 2015, for the global maternal mortality rate to fall below 70 deaths per 100,000 live births by 2030.
The latest data puts the global maternal mortality rate at 197 per 100,000 live births, with a number of nations significantly above that. Seventy-five per cent of deaths due to either severe bleeding, infections, high blood pressure during pregnancy, complications from delivery, or unsafe abortion.
The impact of aid cuts on health programmes is set to be devastating, with one study published in the Lancet this year projecting 23 million extra deaths worldwide by 2030.
When it comes to maternal mortality, one study – published in March – projected that Trump’s termination of programmes by USAID could cause maternal deaths to increase by an average of 45 per cent across six highly vulnerable countries in West Africa.
The paper, which looked at maternal mortality in Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic, Chad, Mali, Niger, and Nigeria, projected that there would be approximately 1,000 additional maternal deaths per 100,000 live births across those six nations within a single year.
In Central African Republic, mobile health clinics funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) that serviced the refugee camp in Birao where Busayna now lives, were cancelled following Trump’s major cuts last year.
“My 35 year old cousin, who had only just escaped Sudan, recently died in hospital while giving birth,” she said from her mud hut around 40 miles from the Sudanese border. “After arriving here, she underwent an emergency operation, but the baby died. A few days later, she also passed away.
“We couldn’t afford the medicine or blood she needed from the hospital, so she bled out” she continued, her face a mask of grief. “When I gave birth, we had no money or food as well. I am alone and struggling to provide.”
The head of the hospital where Busayna gave birth, Dr Ngonzo Lezin, said they had lost 12 staff members because of funding cuts, including eight from the maternity wards, among them all the midwives.
“It is truly a catastrophe for the community We will a return to rudimentary practices, traditional treatments and care at home, which will only increase mortality,” he said from outside the maternity ward.
“Our prayer is that someone can step in to support our healthcare system. The number of maternal deaths will rise. The number of child deaths will rise. For me, it is a cry from the heart.”
The reproductive rights research group the Guttmacher Institute has estimated that the termination of health programmes from USAID alone likely resulted in 34,000 women and girls dying from complications during pregnancy or birth last year.
While the gutting of health programmes under Trump has been unprecedented in its scope and its severity, it fits a pattern of maternal mortality rates rising during Republican presidencies, according to a study from earlier this year.
Aid for family planning typically drops globally under Republican presidents and then rises again once Democratic presidents are elected, the paper, published in BMJ Global Health, found using data across the last 40 years.
The fall in aid under Republican presidents correlated to an 11 per cent increase in maternal mortality, the study found, equivalent to around 45 additional deaths for every 100,000 live births.
Trump’s brutal cuts will likely only extend this, with health workers on the ground in Africa saying skilled birth attendants are losing the jobs, access to medicine for birth is on the decline and services are being shuttered globally.
In the UK, the government is slashing aid spending to some of the poorest countries in the world, as part of moves to reduce spending by 40 per cent.
Plans set out by the foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, will see bilateral support for African countries fall from £1.3bn a year to £677m over the next three years – a drop of 56 per cent – while countries such as Afghanistan, Yemen and Myanmar will also face severe reductions.
The drop in support to Africa will be between 2026-27 and 2028-29, with cuts likely to hit bilateral aid to countries including Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Mauritius, Senegal and Sierra Leone.
The money that the UK spends on humanitarian crisis relief, such as for natural disasters, will also be reduced by 15 per cent to just under £300m a year.
Total UK aid spending is expected to fall from £10bn in 2026-27 to £8.9bn the following year, before increasing slightly to £9.4bn in 2028-29.
Monica Ferro, head of United Nations Population Fund’s London office, said that the work over the last 20 years had given the world “hope that finally the world would be on track to reach zero preventable maternal deaths.”
“We know that when funding is cut, services are shut down and women die. It is that simple. It may sound cruel, but it is that simple, and we have the evidence to prove it.”
“It is very disappointing. The women and girls who are losing access to services will not forgive us for promising them a world with more dignity and then failing them because funding is being withdrawn. ”
This article has been produced as part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid project
