Nigeria carries one of the world’s highest burdens of maternal and newborn mortality. Each year, 240,000 newborns die within their first month of life, including 94,000 on the day of birth, while an estimated 75,000 women lose their lives during pregnancy and childbirth. Strengthening the quality of care at birth is therefore critical to saving lives.
To help address this, the Safer Births Bundle of Care (SBBC) a proven approach to reducing maternal and newborn deaths—is being scaled up across Nigeria through a new UNICEF‑led initiative funded by the European Union. Building on successful implementation in Borno and Gombe, the program will now expand to Kwara, Sokoto, and Adamawa states, significantly increasing its national reach.
The Safer Births Bundle of Care focuses on empowering health workers through continuous, simulation‑based training; improving labor and emergency management with innovative tools; and using real‑time data to drive quality improvement. The approach has demonstrated exceptional results elsewhere. In Tanzania, implementation across five regions led to a 40% reduction in early newborn deaths and a 75% reduction in maternal deaths, showing its potential for transformative impact in Nigeria.
Through this expansion, an estimated 712,560 women will benefit from improved quality of care. Expected outcomes include stronger workforce skills, increased use of lifesaving clinical tools, enhanced digital monitoring, and ultimately, improved survival for mothers and newborns.
As Nigeria works toward Universal Health Coverage and its SDG 3 targets, scaling the Safer Births Bundle of Care represents a major step forward, bringing evidence-based, scalable solutions to the places where they are needed most.
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