Healthy beginnings start with her

Every year on 7 April, World Health Day invites us to reflect on the state of our health systems and more importantly, the lives affected by them. This year’s theme, Healthy beginnings, hopeful futures, launches a year-long global push to reduce preventable maternal and newborn deaths.

If we’re honest, the mother still too often lives in the margins with her health framed not as an end in itself, but as a stepping stone to a healthy baby. This narrative, even though well-intended, subtly erases her value as a person.

Every 7 seconds
Let’s centre this conversation around the truth: each year, nearly 300,000 women die from causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. More than 2 million babies die within the first month of life, and another 2 million are stillborn. That's one preventable death every seven seconds.

This isn't just a statistic - it's a story unfinished. And here’s what’s even more alarming: 4 out of 5 countries are not on track to meet global targets for improving maternal survival by 2030.

Yet still, we struggle to put the woman at the centre.

The Missing "M"
In 2015, Atif Rahman wrote a powerful piece titled Maternal mental health: The missing “m” in the global maternal and child health agenda. Ten years later, the gap he identified is still gaping.

We talk about prenatal vitamins, safe delivery practices, breastfeeding - but what about the anxiety, isolation, and depression that often go unnamed and untreated?

Suicide is now one of the leading causes of death in the perinatal period. The majority of mothers who take their own lives are living with untreated psychiatric disorders. Why? Because maternal mental health remains an afterthought.

Fear of harming the baby, fear of judgment, and a dangerous belief that self-sacrifice is noble - these all conspire to silence struggling mothers. But a mother’s health should not be optional. 

We must move beyond a view of maternal care that treats women well only so their children will thrive. Yes, healthy mothers often mean healthier babies. But the reverse is also true: when we ignore women’s health, we harm children too.

In fact, studies show that children whose mothers have died face five times the risk of dying in the six months following her death.

But more than that, it is a question of justice.

Women are worthy of care. Not because they produce life. Not because they nurture it. But because they are complex, deserving, whole human beings.

We need to start building health systems, campaigns, and policies that say so AND loudly.

Self-care is not selfish

Too often, we expect women to disappear into motherhood. The “selfless mother” becomes an ideal - but also a trap. If she struggles, if she can't breastfeed, if she needs space or support, we shame her. 

We must never separate the mother and the baby in our health narratives. But neither should we blend them so completely that the woman herself vanishes.

Maternal health is not just a means to a healthy baby.

It is a human right.

And if we truly care about healthy futures, we must start with this: women are not just the beginning of life. They are the centre of it.