A woman who dies in childbirth does not only lose her life. She loses every plan she was still building. It could be plans to grow her business, achieve higher education or create a brighter future for her children. Maternal mortality is a direct blow to women's empowerment because empowerment and potential mean little if a woman cannot survive the act of giving life.

The baby survives. Sometimes the baby does not. Either way, a family is left asking the same unbearable question: why should a woman go to a health facility to give life and never return home?

Recent national data presented by the Ghana Health Service (GHS) revealed that 955 maternal deaths were recorded in 2025, up from 779 in 2016. The figures were disclosed by the Director of the GHS Family Health Division, Dr Kennedy Brightson, at a February 2026 workshop on pre-eclampsia and maternal anaemia, where he noted that hypertensive disorders remain a leading cause.

Separate concerns raised at a national dialogue in late 2025 had already painted a disturbing picture of the maternal health crisis. The Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection, Dr Agnes Naa Momo Lartey, and Deputy Chief of Staff Oye Bampoe Addo during the dialogue called for urgent and coordinated national action to address the problem.

Successive governments have introduced measures to protect mothers and reduce preventable deaths, but the numbers tell us that far more must be done.

The time for incremental action is over. Ghana must act with greater urgency, stronger commitment and sustained investment to ensure that no woman pays with her life for the privilege of bringing another life into the world.

Maternal death must be treated with the urgency of a national emergency because that is exactly what it is!

This deadly menace is not only a health problem, but a gender equality and development crisis.

A woman's life should not be the price of motherhood

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has repeatedly stressed that most maternal deaths are preventable. Major causes, according to the WHO include severe bleeding, infections, high blood pressure disorders, complications during delivery and unsafe abortion. Prevention requires more than telling women to attend hospital. Care must be available, affordable, timely and good, backed by skilled personnel, working emergency services, reliable supplies and faster ambulances.

Antenatal care is not optional

Women must be empowered with information. Pregnancy is not a condition to be managed with rumours or myths. Regular antenatal care matters because dangerous complications, especially pre-eclampsia, can be detected early through warning signs such as severe headaches, visual disturbances and swelling of the hands and face.

In some communities, swollen feet are dismissed as normal or explained through myths, including the belief that it signals a woman is carrying a boy. Such beliefs delay care, and a pregnant woman should never gamble with her life because a symptom has been explained away by tradition.

A caesarean section is not a curse

One of the most dangerous misconceptions in childbirth, among some rural women especially, is the belief that a caesarean section represents failure, weakness or a spiritual problem. It does not. It is a medical procedure that can save the life of a mother, her baby or both, and no woman should reject one out of fear of ridicule or religious condemnation. The goal of childbirth is for mother and baby to survive, not to prove a woman can endure labour.

Religious leaders carry real responsibility here. Faith should support medical care, not stand in opposition to it. A woman who undergoes a medically necessary caesarean has not failed, she has been helped to protect her life and her child's.

Referral should not become a death sentence in people's minds

There is troubling fear surrounding referral to major hospitals. Some families hear stories of people dying after referral and conclude that referral itself signals impending death, which creates dangerous delay. Referral is often necessary precisely because a woman needs specialised care. This does not excuse the health system from scrutiny, but fear and misinformation must not stop women from reaching the care they urgently need.

Maternal mortality is not a problem affecting only poor, rural or uneducated women. Poverty raises risk, but educated and financially stable women also face severe complications. Every woman deserves quality maternal healthcare.

Ghana must move from mourning to more action

According to the WHO, more than 700 women globally died every day in 2023 from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth, with sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia accounting for the overwhelming majority. Ghana should not treat each maternal death as unfortunate but inevitable. Every death must raise questions: was the woman monitored, did she seek care early, was referral timely, did the facility have adequate staff, blood and medicine? The answers must lead to action.

A society cannot claim to empower women while accepting preventable deaths in pregnancy and childbirth as "normal." The health system must be strengthened and communities educated, so that families stop pressuring women to reject medical intervention.

Every maternal death is a devastating failure that demands immediate action, accountability and results!

A call to Africa's leaders

Leadership is measured by whose lives are protected, not just whose economies grow. Every maternal death recorded on a ministry's desk represents a woman who trusted her country with her life and was let down. Budgets must reach the last clinic, not just the capital. Policies mean nothing if a rural mother still bleeds to death waiting for an ambulance that never comes. Africa cannot rise while burying the women who carry its future. Let this be the generation of leaders who choose accountability and decisive action over anything else!

The writer is a children's rights advocate and the founder of The Raissa Child Protection Initiative.