– Sai Jyothirmai Racherla, Deputy Executive Director, ARROW
World Health Day 2025 – Maternal and Newborn Health
As we celebrated World Health Day 2025 yesterday, an aptly chosen theme of maternal and newborn health was particularly fitting. A year-long campaign, titled ‘Healthy beginnings, Hopeful futures,’ will commence throughout 2025 on maternal and newborn health to revitalise actions and urge governments and the health communities to ramp up efforts to end preventable maternal and new-born deaths.
In reality, prioritising maternal and newborn health calls for sexual and reproductive rights and gender equality to be at the core. In the current context, where a maternal death occurs every two minutes globally, with the majority happening in the Global South, it is essential to take a holistic sexual and reproductive health and rights pathway to end maternal and newborn deaths and related morbidity.
Asia and the Pacific – Maternal Deaths and Unmet Need for Contraception
Asia and the Pacific is a mixed bag of successes and challenges when it comes to sexual and reproductive health and rights of women and girls in all their diversity. Central and Southern Asia continues to experience a “moderate” number of preventable maternal deaths, with 112 deaths per 100,000 live births (UI 97 to 134) in 2023.
This rate is second to Sub-Saharan Africa, which reported 454 deaths per 100,000 live births (UI 387 to 572) in the same year, according to a report released ahead of World Health Day at the United Nations.
Despite progress, maternal mortality has been stagnating or even increasing in some developing countries since 2015. While we celebrate Asia’s success in contraception uptake, the proportion of women of reproductive age whose need for family planning was met with modern methods (SDG indicator 3.7.1) saw only a modest increase from 74% in 2000 to 78% in 2023, still significantly below the target of universal access by 2030.
There are still 140 million women in the region with an unmet need for contraception. Every year, over 3.7 million teenagers become pregnant, with approximately one in eight unintended births taking place in Asia and the Pacific (UNFPA).
Adolescent Fertility
Adolescent fertility rates have been declining but remain considerable on average across the Asia region. In 2021, these rates ranged from as low as 0.4 births per 1,000 girls aged 15-19 in Korea to 82.4 births per 1,000 girls aged 15-19 in Lao PDR. Adolescent fertility rates are also substantial among Pacific Island countries and territories, at 51 births per 1,000 girls.
Deciding on whether, when, and by what means to have children, and how many children to have, is a fundamental reproductive right. However, the data from Asia mentioned above shows that women and girls in all their diversity are NOT exercising their reproductive rights, bodily autonomy, and fundamental freedoms.
Health Expenditures
Furthermore, household health expenditures (SDG indicator 3.8.2) remain high, with progress regressing in 2024. This is placing families under financial strain and limiting their access to essential health services. The percentage of people in Southeast Asia spending more than 10 percent of their total household income on health has increased, rising from 13.1 percent in 2010 to 16.1 percent in 2019 (WHO & Asia and the Pacific SDG Progress Report 2025).
Positive sexual and reproductive health and rights outcomes, including maternal and newborn health, directly depend on:
- Holistic availability, accessibility, and acceptability of quality comprehensive sexuality education (CSE);
- Counselling and services for a range of modern contraceptives, with a defined minimum number and types of methods;
- Antenatal, childbirth, and postnatal care, including emergency obstetric and newborn care;
- Safe abortion services and treatment of complications of unsafe abortion;
- Prevention and treatment of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections;
- Prevention, detection, immediate services, and referrals for cases of sexual and gender-based violence;
- Prevention, detection, and management of reproductive cancers, especially cervical cancer;
- Information, counselling, and services for subfertility and infertility;
- Information, counselling, and services for sexual health and well-being. [i]
Recommendations
Therefore, the following actions are crucial as the World Health Day campaign 2025 is implemented for the whole of this year:
- Ensure robust, resilient and integrated health systems, and skilled workforce are in place and provide information on available, accessible, acceptable and quality sexual and reproductive health information and services, to all, including women and girls with disabilities, migrants, adolescents, and older persons prioritised across the life course. In emergency contexts of conflicts and climate crises sexual and reproductive health information and services should not be compromised.
- Health financing gaps should be filled through committed external aid, including cancelling debt for countries facing debt crises. Domestic resource mobilisation should reduce out-of-pocket expenses much below catastrophic household health expenditure levels.
- Ensure essential packages of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) interventions are providing comprehensive SRH services to all, within the universal health coverage plans at the national level.
- Ensure robust and rigorous nationally owned, publicly shared, sexual and reproductive health data management information systems are functional and collected from the local to the global levels.
The momentum created in 2025, with the theme on health and well-being, transcends across key UN multilateral spaces, including the follow-up and review of Agenda 2030 on sustainable development, but also the 58th Session of the Commission on Population and Development (7-11 April 2025).
Maternal health and well-being are crucial facets of healthy beginnings and hopeful futures. Only a holistic sexual and reproductive health and rights agenda, including bodily autonomy for women and girls in all their diversities, will contribute to Healthy Beginnings, Hopeful Futures.
Guttmacher Institute. (2018, May 1). Accelerate Progress: Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights for All — Executive Summary. Guttmacher Institute. https://www.guttmacher.org/guttmacher-lancet-commission/accelerate-progress-executive-summary
World Health Organization. (2023). Trends in maternal mortality 2000 to 2020: estimates by WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA, World Bank Group and UNDESA/Population Division. Executive summary. World Health Organization.
World Health Organization. (2024). World health statistics 2024 Monitoring health for the SDGs, Sustainable Development Goals. https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/376869/9789240094703-eng.pdf?sequence=1
Asia and the Pacific SDG Progress Report 2025 : engaging communities to close the evidence gap. (2025). ESCAP. https://unescap.org/kp/2025/asia-and-pacific-sdg-progress-report-2025
Ending inequalities in sexual and reproductive health and rights INTERWOVEN LIVES, THREADS OF HOPE Ensuring rights and choices for all. https://www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/pub-pdf/swp2024-english-240327-web.pdf
Trends in maternal mortality estimates 2000 to 2023: estimates by WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA, World Bank Group and UNDESA/Population Division. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2025. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.
