Nine hundred women. Nine hundred families shattered. Nine hundred futures erased—not by fate, but by preventable failures in Ghana’s maternal health system.
This is the sobering reality confronting the nation in 2025, as the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection warns that Ghana is drifting dangerously off course in its commitment to protect mothers’ lives.
Speaking at a high-level stakeholder engagement in Accra, the Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection, Agnes Naa Momo Lartey, revealed that approximately 900 women have died from pregnancy- and childbirth-related complications this year alone. With weeks still left in the year, officials caution the toll could exceed 1,000 maternal deaths if urgent action is not taken.
Despite decades of policy commitments and investments in maternal healthcare, progress has stalled. Ghana’s maternal mortality ratio has declined only marginally—from 316 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2010 to 301 in 2020. At this pace, the country is far from meeting Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3, which seeks to reduce maternal mortality to 70 deaths per 100,000 live births by 2030.
Even more alarming, data from the Ghana Health Service shows a reversal in recent gains, with maternal deaths increasing from 100 per 100,000 live births in 2023 to 102 in 2024—a troubling sign that existing interventions are failing to deliver sustainable results.
At the Presidential Maternal Health Dialogue in Accra, Madam Lartey did not mince words. Many of these deaths, she stressed, are entirely preventable, yet persist due to weak health systems, delayed antenatal care, poor emergency transport and referral networks, and socio-cultural barriers that discourage timely care-seeking—especially in rural and hard-to-reach communities.
The Deputy Chief of Staff at the Office of the President, Oye Bampo, confirmed that nearly 900 maternal deaths had already been recorded nationwide as of November 2025. The warning is clear: without decisive intervention, the crisis will worsen.
On behalf of the Minister of Health, Dr. Hafez Adam Taher, Director of Technical Coordination and Health Planning at the Ministry of Health, acknowledged that Ghana is off track under its Universal Health Coverage roadmap. Persistent gaps remain in emergency transport services, blood availability and transfusion systems, supply chains for essential maternal health commodities, and the consistent implementation of maternal and newborn death surveillance.
Beyond statistics, maternal mortality is a national development failure and a human rights crisis. The Gender Minister disclosed that even her own Ministry has recorded a maternal death among this year’s cases—underscoring that no family, institution or community is immune.
In response, government has announced plans to intensify interventions, including the uncapping of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) and the expansion of social protection measures under the Mahama Cares Initiative, aimed at removing financial and logistical barriers to emergency maternal care.
But policy promises alone will not save lives.
Calling for a whole-of-society response, Madam Lartey urged traditional and religious leaders, families, local authorities, civil society, the media and the private sector to act decisively.
“Saving women’s lives is not charity; it is justice.”
This is a call Ghana cannot afford to ignore. Every maternal death reflects a system that failed a woman at her most vulnerable moment. If childbirth continues to claim the lives of Ghanaian women, the nation’s development, dignity and conscience are all at stake.
The time to act is now—not tomorrow, not after another report, not after another life is lost.
