Progress Worth Celebrating.
For years, countries across Africa, including Nigeria, have invested heavily in reducing maternal mortality. Governments, funders, development partners, and implementing partners have strengthened emergency obstetric care, improved access to life-saving maternity commodities, upskilled healthcare workers’ competencies and skills, and introduced innovative approaches to improve the quality of maternal care.
These efforts are delivering results.
In many places, maternal mortality is declining, and that deserves recognition. According to the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare’s State of the Health of the Nation Report, facility-based maternal deaths in Nigeria dropped nearly 50% (from 904 deaths in 2024 down to 460 in 2025). Every woman who survives childbirth is a victory for her family, her community, and the health system.
But there is an uncomfortable question we rarely ask. “What if the mother survives, but her baby does not?”
An Incomplete Measure of Success.
Stillbirths rarely make headlines.
Unlike maternal mortality, they are seldom the centerpiece of health reports, political commitments, or programme success stories. Yet thousands of families continue to experience the devastating loss of a baby before or during birth. In Nigeria, stillbirth rate currently stands at 24 deaths per thousand total births, twice the national target of 12 or fewer stillbirths per 1,000 total births by 2030 as outlined in the Nigeria Every Newborn Action Plan (NiENAP)
For many families, the loss of a mother and the loss of a baby are not competing tragedies. Both represent profound loss. Both often arise from preventable complications during pregnancy or labour. And both deserve equal attention.
If maternal mortality declines while stillbirth rates remain stubbornly high, can we truly say the health system is succeeding?
Perhaps not.
A nation’s future is often said to rest in its children. If that is true, then every preventable stillbirth represents more than a personal tragedy. It is the loss of a future student, innovator, teacher, farmer, entrepreneur, or leader.
The Same Health System Can and Should Save Both Lives
The encouraging reality is that maternal deaths and stillbirths often share the same solutions.
A woman experiencing prolonged labour needs timely monitoring, not only to prevent complications for herself but also to detect fetal distress before it is too late.
The same is true of skilled birth attendants, effective labour monitoring, functioning referral systems, timely emergency interventions, essential medicines and supplies, and high-quality intrapartum care.
Strengthening these systems can simultaneously reduce risks for mothers and babies.
Looking Beyond
In many cases, a stillbirth is not simply a tragic outcome. It is a warning sign that something within the health system needs attention.
This calls for a broader view of how government, donors, implementing and development partners design and strengthen maternal and newborn health programmes. The health of a mother and her baby is shaped by a continuum of care, from pregnancy and antenatal care, through labour and childbirth, to immediate newborn care and the postnatal period. Gaps at any point along this continuum can have consequences for both lives.
At ACE, this perspective increasingly informs how we support our clients to translate health priorities into integrated, context-specific strategies that consider the mother and child as part of the same continuum of care. Our focus is not simply on individual MNCH interventions or outcomes, but on how different elements of the health system come together to improve outcomes across the continuum.
Our ambition extends beyond ensuring women survive childbirth. It also includes helping mothers leave health facilities with healthy babies in their arms.
Because for us, true progress is reflected by fewer families experiencing the silent heartbreak of any loss.
Perhaps the next chapter in improving maternal and newborn health is not about choosing which lives matter most but ensuring that every birth has the best possible chance of ending with two lives saved.
Authors Bio: Grace Gyet is a Programs Associate at ACE Strategy & Consults, where she supports MNCH programmes through data-driven analysis, programme strategy, and health systems strengthening. Her work focuses on translating evidence into practical approaches that improve health outcomes across Nigeria. She is passionate about building stronger health systems where no woman or child dies from a preventable cause and is driven by the belief that every mother and child deserves the opportunity to survive and thrive.