Aid cuts could leave more women dying in pregnancy and birth, UN says

By Jennifer Rigby and Mariam Sunny

LONDON (Reuters) -Cuts to assistance budgets are threatening to undermine years of advancement successful reducing the fig of women dying during gestation and childbirth, and could pb to a emergence successful deaths, the United Nations has warned.

Globally, determination was a 40% diminution successful maternal deaths betwixt 2000 and 2023, a study by UN agencies including the World Health Organization (WHO) showed connected Monday, mostly owed to amended entree to indispensable wellness services.

That could present spell into reverse, the WHO said successful a connection accompanying the study which did not notation circumstantial cuts but came successful the aftermath of a overseas assistance frost by the U.S. authorities and the ending of backing done the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for galore programmes.

Other donor countries including Britain person besides announced plans to chopped assistance budgets.

"One of the header messages is that the backing cuts hazard not lone that progress, but we could person a displacement backward," said Dr Bruce Aylward, Assistant Director-General, Universal Health Coverage astatine the WHO.

The cuts person had "pandemic-like effects" connected wellness systems globally and could person a "more structural, deep-seated effect," Aylward added.

The WHO said the cuts were already rolling backmost captious services for maternal, newborn and kid wellness successful galore countries, reducing unit numbers, closing facilities and disrupting proviso chains for supplies including treatments for hemorrhage and pre-eclampsia.

Cuts to different areas, specified arsenic malaria and HIV treatment, would besides interaction maternal survival, the UN said.

Even earlier the assistance cuts led by the United States, things were backsliding successful immoderate countries, and advancement has slowed globally since 2016, the study said.

In 2023, contempt caller progress, a pistillate inactive died astir each 2 minutes - astir 260,000 successful full that twelvemonth - from complications that were chiefly preventable and treatable, it added.

The concern was peculiarly atrocious successful countries affected by struggle oregon earthy disaster, though the U.S. itself is 1 of lone 4 countriesto person seen its maternal mortality complaint summation importantly since 2000, alongside Venezuela, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica.

The COVID-19 pandemic besides had an impact, the study said: 40,000 much women died owed to gestation oregon childbirth successful 2021, bringing the full fig of deaths that twelvemonth to 322,000.

"While this study shows glimmers of hope, the information besides highlights however unsafe gestation inactive is successful overmuch of the satellite contiguous – contempt the information that solutions exist," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

The study itself was part-funded by USAID.

(Reporting by Jennifer Rigby and Mariam E Sunny; Editing by Andrew Heavens)