This year World Health Day is being marked through a campaign called, ‘Healthy beginnings and hopeful futures’, which aims to protect mums and babies from preventable deaths and promote women’s longer-term health and wellbeing.
Ensuring that pregnant women and those who have a young baby take up the benefits they are entitled to is vital. A range of resources are available to help stakeholders raise awareness about Best Start Foods and Best Start Grant Pregnancy and Baby Payment.
Best Start Foods is a pre-paid card which aims to tackle the impact of child poverty by improving access to healthy foods and milk for eligible families on a low income. It can be used in supermarkets and convenience stores throughout the country.
The Scottish Government has a cash-first approach to ending the need for food banks in Scotland and improving access to healthy foods for low-income families.
Adequate nutrition and diet are cornerstones of how young children grow and develop. These payments help reduce the diet related health gap between people on low incomes and better off families.
Women can claim Best Start Foods as soon as they know they are pregnant and can continue to be paid until a child is three years old.
Best Start Foods provides:
£21.60 every four weeks throughout pregnancy
£43.20 every four weeks from birth until a child turns one or reaches the first anniversary of its estimated delivery date, whichever is later
£21.60 every four weeks from one until a child turns three.
Best Start Grant Pregnancy and Baby Payment helps with the costs of being pregnant and having a baby. People can apply for the payment from the end of the 24th week of pregnancy up until 6 months after the baby is born. Pregnancy and Baby Payment is £767.50 for the first child and £383.75 for a second child and any more after that.
A study into Best Start Foods found the payment helps people buy more healthy foods. Families who benefit from Best Start Foods develop healthier shopping habits and buy healthier snacks for their children, instead of high fat or high sugar foods like crisps or chocolate. The payment gives people the freedom to experiment with new healthy recipes without worrying about wasting money or food.
Best Start Foods provides vital support to the families who need it most. It has been called a ‘lifesaver,’ by some families. For others the payments have freed up money for things like household bills or clothes for their children. Healthcare professionals also report that their clients seem less worried about money thanks to Best Start Foods.
World Health Day marks the foundation of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 1948. It is celebrated annually and each year draws attention to a specific health topic.
World Health Day, celebrated on 7 April 2025, kicks off a year-long campaign on maternal and newborn health.
The campaign, titled Healthy beginnings, hopeful futures, will urge governments and the health community to ramp up efforts to end preventable maternal and newborn deaths, and to prioritize women’s longer-term health and well-being.
WHO and partners will also share useful information to support healthy pregnancies and births, and better postnatal health.
Helping every woman and baby survive and thrive
This task is critical. Tragically, based on currently published estimates, close to 300 000 women lose their life due to pregnancy or childbirth each year, while over 2 million babies die in their first month of life and around 2 million more are stillborn. That’s roughly 1 preventable death every 7 seconds.
Based on current trends, a staggering 4 out of 5 countries are off track to meet targets for improving maternal survival by 2030. 1 in 3 will fail to meet targets for reducing newborn deaths.
Listening to women and supporting families
Women and families everywhere need high quality care that supports them physically and emotionally, before, during and after birth.
Health systems must evolve to manage the many health issues that impact maternal and newborn health. These not only include direct obstetric complications but also mental health conditions, noncommunicable diseases and family planning.
Aid cuts threaten fragile progress in ending maternal deaths, UN agencies warn
Countries must recommit to ending deaths in childbirth amid major headwinds
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Women today are more likely than ever to survive pregnancy and childbirth according to a major new report released today, but United Nations (UN) agencies highlight the threat of major backsliding as unprecedented aid cuts take effect around the world.
Released on World Health Day, the UN report, Trends in maternal mortality, shows a 40% global decline in maternal deaths between 2000 and 2023 – largely due to improved access to essential health services. Still, the report reveals that the pace of improvement has slowed significantly since 2016, and that an estimated 260 000 women died in 2023 as a result of complications from pregnancy or childbirth – roughly equivalent to one maternal death every two minutes.
The report comes as humanitarian funding cuts are having severe impacts on essential health care in many parts of the world, forcing countries to roll back vital services for maternal, newborn and child health. These cuts have led to facility closures and loss of health workers, while also disrupting supply chains for lifesaving supplies and medicines such as treatments for haemorrhage, pre-eclampsia and malaria – all leading causes of maternal deaths.
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Without urgent action, the agencies warn that pregnant women in multiple countries will face severe repercussions – particularly those in humanitarian settings where maternal deaths are already alarmingly high.
“While this report shows glimmers of hope, the data also highlights how dangerous pregnancy still is in much of the world today despite the fact that solutions exist to prevent and treat the complications that cause the vast majority of maternal deaths,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO). “In addition to ensuring access to quality maternity care, it will be critical to strengthen the underlying health and reproductive rights of women and girls – factors that underpin their prospects of healthy outcomes during pregnancy and beyond.”
The report also provides the first global account of the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on maternal survival. In 2021, an estimated 40 000 more women died due to pregnancy or childbirth – increasing to 322 000 from 282 000 the previous year. This upsurge was linked not only to direct complications caused by COVID-19, but also widespread interruptions to maternity services. This highlights the importance of ensuring such care during pandemics and other emergencies, noting that pregnant women need reliable access to routine services and checks as well as round-the-clock urgent care.
“When a mother dies in pregnancy or childbirth, her baby’s life is also at risk. Too often, both are lost to causes we know how to prevent,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell. “Global funding cuts to health services are putting more pregnant women at risk, especially in the most fragile settings, by limiting their access to essential care during pregnancy and the support they need when giving birth. The world must urgently invest in midwives, nurses, and community health workers to ensure every mother and baby has a chance to survive and thrive.”
The report highlights persistent inequalities between regions and countries, as well as uneven progress. With maternal mortality declining by around 40% between 2000 and 2023, sub-Saharan Africa achieved significant gains – and was one of just three UN regions alongside Australia and New Zealand, and Central and Southern Asia, to see significant drops after 2015. However, confronting high rates of poverty and multiple conflicts, the sub-Saharan Africa region still counted for approximately 70% of the global burden of maternal deaths in 2023.
Indicating slowing progress, maternal mortality stagnated in five regions after 2015: Northern Africa and Western Asia, Eastern and South-Eastern Asia, Oceania (excluding Australia and New Zealand), Europe and North America, and Latin America and the Caribbean.
“Access to quality maternal health services is a right, not a privilege, and we all share the urgent responsibility to build well-resourced health systems that safeguard the life of every pregnant woman and newborn,” said Dr Natalia Kanem, UNFPA’s Executive Director. “By boosting supply chains, the midwifery workforce, and the disaggregated data needed to pinpoint those most at risk, we can and must end the tragedy of preventable maternal deaths and their enormous toll on families and societies.”
Pregnant women living in humanitarian emergencies face some of the highest risks globally, according to the report.Nearly two-thirds of global maternal deaths now occur in countries affected by fragility or conflict.
For women in these settings, the risks are staggering: a 15-year-old girl faces a 1 in 51 risk of dying from a maternal cause at some point over her lifetime compared to 1 in 593 in more stable countries.
The highest risks are in Chad and the Central African Republic (1 in 24), followed by Nigeria (1 in 25), Somalia (1 in 30), and Afghanistan (1 in 40).
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Beyond ensuring critical services during pregnancy, childbirth and the postnatal period, the report notes the importance of efforts to enhance women’s overall health by improving access to family planning services, as well as preventing underlying health conditions like anaemias, malaria and noncommunicable diseases that increase risks. It will also be critical to ensure girls stay in school and that women and girls have the knowledge and resources to protect their health.
Urgent investment is needed to prevent maternal deaths. The world is currently off-track to meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal target for maternal survival. Globally, the maternal mortality ratio would need to fall by around 15% each year to meet the 2030 target – significantly increasing from current annual rates of decline of around 1.5%.
