Eight hundred (800) pregnant women died during labour in Ghana in 2024, never making it back home after entering delivery wards across the country.
The figure, though slightly improved, represents only a marginal reduction from the 819 maternal deaths recorded in 2023.
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In 2022, maternal deaths stood at 806.
The latest statistics were disclosed by Dr. Kennedy Brightson, Director for Public Health at the Ghana Health Service (GHS), at the opening of the 5th Maternal, Child Health and Nutrition Conference in Accra.
He warned that despite more trained midwives, specialists, and expanded health education, Ghana continues to lose mothers at an alarming rate.
The three-day conference is being held on the theme: “Strengthening Free Primary Health Care – Accelerating Equity and Access to Reproductive, Maternal, Child, Adolescent and Nutrition Services towards attainment of the SDG 2030.”
Dr Brightson described as troubling the steady declines in skilled delivery, child immunisation, adolescent health services, and postnatal care between 2022 and 2024.
“It is unusual that with more specialists, more midwives, and more awareness creation, we are still recording these deaths,” he said.
“Key indicators are falling, and this threatens our progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals.”
A growing complication, he added, is the rising number of obstetric fistula cases, particularly visico-vaginal fistula (VVF)—a childbirth injury that leaves women incontinent.
He expressed concern that many affected women hide indoors due to stigma, even though repairs continue nationwide.
However, resource constraints mean that in 2025 the Service can target only 80 surgical repairs out of an estimated 300 cases.
Turning to child health, Dr Brightson said Ghana expects about 349,022 births in 2025, but the scale of skilled attendance and emergency obstetric care has not kept pace.
He called for stronger health financing, improved supply chains, and expanded community-level health systems.
“Primary health care is the backbone of our health system,” he said. “If it fails, mothers, newborns, children, adolescents, and the elderly will pay the price.”
Nutrition experts at the conference also raised alarms.
Dr Maxwell Bisala Konla, a Dietitian at the University of Ghana Hospital, said Ghana is facing “a silent nutrition crisis,” worsened by heavy consumption of ultra-processed foods and widespread micronutrient deficiencies.
Women of reproductive age, he noted, face shortages of iron, vitamin A, iodine and folate.
Children continue to suffer from stunting, wasting and anaemia, while adolescents consume diets lacking essential nutrients.
“Our food system is setting many Ghanaians up for malnutrition,” Dr Konla said, urging the government to make healthy diets more affordable and integrate nutrition into every primary health care encounter.
For his part, Dr Promise Sefogah, General Secretary of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Ghana (SOGOG), called for greater policy focus on women going through the menopausal transition — a demographic he said remains largely invisible within current care frameworks.
“We must address gaps in care before, during and after the reproductive years,” he said. “Universal access to respectful, quality obstetric care must be a national priority.”
Experts concluded that unless Ghana urgently strengthens primary health care, nutrition interventions, and maternal support systems, preventable deaths and complications will continue to undermine national progress toward the SDGs.
