Kenya: World Population Day - Renewing Our Promise to Every Woman and Every Newborn Everywhere

opinion

By Dr. Julliet Omwoha, Head of the Newborn and Child Health section at the Division of Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health (RMNCAH), Ministry of Health, Kenya

On World Population Day, we are often asked to look at numbers such as how many people we are, how fast we are growing, and what our population will need in the years ahead. They should help us understand the conditions into which people are born, the systems that shape their health and opportunity, and the futures they are able to build.

In Kenya, there are a few numbers that stop us in our tracks. Every single day, we lose an estimated 15 mothers to pregnancy-related causes, 92 newborns die and 93 stillbirths are recorded. The majority of these deaths are preventable. Over the past decade, the country has made significant gains in maternal and newborn health. Facility deliveries increased from 62 percent in 2014 to 89% percent in 2022. Almost all pregnant women now have at least one antenatal care visit and nearly four out of five mothers and newborns receive a critical postnatal check within the first 48 hours.

Despite this, a woman and newborn may reach a facility and still not receive the care that can save their lives. The leading causes of maternal deaths are well-known, i.e., bleeding after childbirth, hypertensive disorders, sepsis, obstructed labour, and anaemia. Newborns die from prematurity, birth asphyxia (breathing complications) , respiratory distress, neonatal sepsis, and jaundice. These conditions are preventable and treatable with timely, affordable, and proven interventions. The problem is that those interventions do not always reach every woman and every newborn when they are needed.

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Kenya's maternal and newborn deaths are driven by three delays: delays in deciding to seek care, delays in reaching the right facility, and delays in receiving timely, quality care once inside that facility. The third delay is now one of the most urgent as the data shows us that delays within health facilities contribute to almost half (45 percent) of maternal deaths.

The Kenya Quality of Care Health Facility Assessment 2024 found major gaps in maternal and newborn service readiness. Only 37 percent of facilities that offer delivery services provide all basic emergency obstetric and newborn care services. One third of Level 4 and Level 5 facilities do not have caesarean section and blood transfusion services and o nly 12 percent of facilities that provide maternity care are equipped to offer newborn care services.

As World Population Day 2026 encourages us to look at the conditions of our growing demographics, the Ministry of Health remains committed to building a health system that protects families and future generations from complications before any emergencies even happen. This is the ambition behind the Every Woman Every Newborn Everywhere Acceleration Plan 2026–2028.

Launched one month ago, the plan is Kenya's most focused national effort to end preventable maternal and newborn deaths and stillbirths. It brings together national and county governments, health facilities, communities, and partners around a shared goal of making maternal and newborn care timely, respectful, high-quality, and reliable in every county. The goal is 90–90–80–80 : 90 percent of pregnant women attending four or more antenatal care visits; 90 percent skilled deliveries; 80 percent of mothers and newborns receiving postnatal care within two days; and 80 percent of women having access to emergency obstetric and newborn care within two hours.

The Ministry of Health has already made important commitments to support this shift. President William Ruto announced KSh 4 billion through the Social Health Authority to expand maternal healthcare coverage, KSh 1 billion to the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority for essential maternal and newborn commodities and, KSh 2.5 billion for family planning supplies and recruitment and deployment of 5,000 nurses to strengthen frontline maternal and newborn care.

The Ministry of Health, together with the counties is committed to protecting financing for maternal and newborn health, prevent stock-outs of lifesaving medicines and technologies, strengthen emergency obstetric and newborn services, and invest in the health workers who provide care every day. We are also ramping up efforts to improve referral coordination, ambulance services, community engagement, and data systems so that complications are recognized early, mothers and newborns reach the right level of care quickly, and every preventable death leads to action.

Over the next six months, Kenya's Maternal and Newborn Health Rapid Results Initiative (RRI) will focus on 26 high-burden counties, targeting measurable reductions in facility maternal deaths, newborn deaths and fresh stillbirths while strengthening leadership, financing, commodities, data systems, workforce capacity and quality of care.

This is what demographic resilience must mean in practice. It is the ability to anticipate how Kenya's population is changing, and building systems that respond to people's needs across their lives, including the moment a woman becomes a mother, and the first fragile hours of a newborn's life.

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As Kenyans, we can point to real progress in bringing women into the health system. Through the leadership of the national and county governments, and the sustained support of health workers, communities, development partners, civil society, and faith-based actors, more women are attending antenatal care, delivering in facilities, and more mothers and newborns are receiving postnatal checks. The next task is to ensure that every one of those contacts with the health system is safe, timely, and capable of saving lives.

On World Population Day, we are called to look beyond the numbers and see the lives they represent. A growing population should be measured by whether every person can live with dignity, health, and opportunity. For Kenya, that begins with the mother giving life, and the newborn taking their first breath. That is the promise of every woman, every newborn, everywhere.

Dr. Julliet  Omwoha ,  Head of the Newborn and Child Health section at the Division of Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health (RMNCAH), Ministry of Health, Kenya