Delivery care

Last update: January 2024 | Next update: January 2025

Each year, millions of births still occur without any assistance from a skilled attendant despite recent progress

 

Delivery care

Maternal and Newborn Health Coverage

Notes on the data

UNICEF – in collaboration with WHO – is the custodian agency responsible for monitoring and reporting “Proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel”, an official indicator for Goal 3 of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Sustainable Development Goal Target Indicator
Goal 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages

Target 3.1: By 2030, reduce the global maternal mortality ratio to less than 70 per 100,000 live births

3.1.2: Proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel (doctor, nurse, midwife)

Definition:

The proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel as defined as the percentage of live births attended by skilled health personnel (doctor, nurse, midwife).

Computation:

The indicator is computed as the number of live births attended by skilled health personnel out of total number of live births in a specified reference period.

Limitations:

Standardization of the definition of skilled health personnel can be challenging on account of differences in training of health personnel across countries. Although efforts have been made to standardize the definitions of doctors, nurses, midwives (and in some cases, auxiliary midwives) used in most household surveys, it is likely that the abilities of many skilled attendants to provide appropriate care in an emergency depends on the environment in which they work. Additionally, this indicator is a measure of a health system’s ability to provide adequate care for pregnant women; however, concerns have been expressed that the presence of a skilled attendant may not adequately capture women’s access to good-quality care, particularly when complications arise, and that information on the supplies and equipment a skilled attendant may or may not have is lacking.

Database:

Since 2015, UNICEF and WHO have maintained a joint database on skilled attendant at birth. Joint estimates are published annually, released simultaneously in May by UNICEF and WHO in the State of the World’s Children report, and are available at www.data.unicef.org and World Health Statistics (http://www.who.int/whosis/whostat/en/), respectively. As skilled attendance at delivery is an SDG indicator (3.1.2), databases and regional estimates are also provided for SDG data releases on an annual basis.