Current Status of U.S. Global Maternal and Child Health Effortsin 2023, 8 million children under the age of 5 (more than 13,000 every day) died, with the highest rates of under-5 mortality in sub-Saharan Africa.
About 260,000 women (or nearly one every two minutes) died during and following pregnancy and childbirth in 2023 – 92% of them in low- and middle-income countries.
The majority of these deaths are preventable with proper interventions and access to care.
Recent decades have seen major gains in preventing maternal and child mortality.
Both the number and the rate of children dying before age 5 have fallen by more than half since 1990, and over 90 countries have cut under-five mortality rates by at least two-thirds.
From 2000 to 2023, the annual number of maternal deaths worldwide fell by 40%.
The U.S. government has contributed significantly to these gains, reporting that it helped to save the lives of more than 9.3 million children and 340,000 women over the past decade alone.
The U.S. has been the top donor government to MCH (Maternal and Child Health) activities in the world.
The administration’s FY 2026 budget request does not include any funding for bilateral maternal and child efforts.
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