Bangladesh has cut maternal deaths by 79 percent and met a global target early

In 2000, for every 100,000 babies born alive in Bangladesh, 523 mothers died. By 2023 the figure was 115. On 8 September 2026, at the World Health Organization's regional committee meeting in Dili, Timor-Leste, WHO's Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus handed a letter of congratulations to the country's health minister, Sardar Md Sakhawat Husain. Bangladesh had met the Ending Preventable Maternal Mortality target, a maternal mortality ratio below 140, ahead of the 2030 deadline. That ratio counts maternal deaths, meaning deaths caused or made worse by pregnancy during it or within 42 days of its end, for every 100,000 live births.

How we know

The figures come from Trends in maternal mortality, the estimate the UN agencies publish together, whose April 2025 edition covers 2000 to 2023. It puts Bangladesh's maternal mortality ratio at 115, down from 523, a fall of 79 percent at an average of 7 percent a year. Worldwide the fall over the same period was 40 percent, and the global ratio in 2023 was 197. WHO's letter credits the government's leadership, its health policies, well organised reproductive and maternal health programmes, and progress in putting essential health services within reach, with delivery and midwifery care from skilled health workers, community participation and collaboration with partners doing much of the work on the ground. UNICEF, the UN Population Fund and WHO, writing in April 2025, name the same list from a different angle: thousands of professional midwives trained and deployed, emergency care for pregnant women strengthened, family planning widened, the community health worker network extended, and women's economic and educational standing improved. None of it is a single breakthrough. The award was one of several handed out at the Seventy-ninth Session of the WHO Regional Committee for South-East Asia, where Bangladesh was also recognised, with eight other countries, for holding maternal and neonatal tetanus elimination for a decade.

Why it matters

About 260,000 women died during or after pregnancy and childbirth worldwide in 2023, more than 700 a day, one roughly every two minutes. Ninety-two percent of those maternal deaths were in low and lower-middle income countries, where the ratio averaged 346 against 10 in high income countries. A 15-year-old girl in a low-income country faces a lifetime risk of maternal death of about 1 in 66; in a high-income country it is 1 in 7,933. Bangladesh sits in the group carrying that burden and moved anyway, which is the part other countries can use. What moved it was not a single intervention but a system: equipped facilities, a trained workforce, and reliable access to medicines, diagnostics and supplies. That is what the three UN agencies say has to be protected next, and protection is not assured. Out-of-pocket payments, the money patients hand over themselves, make up 74 percent of health spending in Bangladesh, among the highest shares in the world, and in April 2025 the agencies warned that announced and potential donor cuts could force maternal services to be scaled back. The same month UNFPA named Bangladesh one of six champion countries in a new Midwifery Accelerator, on the argument that midwives can avert two thirds of maternal and newborn deaths and stillbirths. To reach the global target by 2030 the world now needs the ratio to fall by almost 15 percent a year, a rate rarely achieved at national level. Bangladesh averaged 7 percent a year over 23 years. The knowledge and the staff exist. Whether they reach every woman is a question of money and attention.