The Maternal Health and Newborn Thematic Fund 2022 Annual report

In 2022, the Maternal and Newborn Health Thematic Fund (MHTF) continued to provide tailored and catalytic support with the overall goal of ensuring that every woman, adolescent girl and newborn has equitable and accountable access to quality sexual, reproductive, maternal and newborn health and rights. It did so by strengthening health systems in 32 countries with high maternal morbidity and mortality spanning five regions: the Arab States, Asia and the Pacific, East and Southern Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and West and Central Africa. Furthermore, the sixth UNFPA region, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, received catalytic resources for midwifery needs assessments.

On the last year of Phase III, the MHTF enabled 2.4 million pregnant women to receive safe delivery care adding to the cumulative total of 28 million women since the inception of the Fund in 2008. Over 84,000 midwives have been supported through pre-service education and in-service training to sustain and improve essential life-saving skills . Nearly 10,000 fistula repair surgeries were performed. Selectedcountries benefited from redesigning their national network of referral health facilities that provide emergency obstetric and newborn care, allowing the management of 414,000 obstretic complications, included in the 3.1 million cases since inception.

Going forward in Phase IV, together with the findings and recommendations of the mid-term evaluation, the MHTF will leverage its successes and the lessons learned to respond to megatrends, including climate change, digitalization and pandemics, that are impacting maternal and newborn health.

Through the MHTF, UNFPA remains committed to delivering integrated sexual, reproductive,maternal and newborn health services, aiming to achieve its three transformative results by 2030.