Topic: 2025 – Maternal Mortality
Country: Turkey
Delegate Name: Murphy Hawk
Committee- World Health Organization
Country- Türkiye
Delegate- Murphy Hawk
Maternal Mortality
In 2023, there were over 700 maternal deaths that were due to preventable causes, and this is seen in most low-income areas around the world that lack the resources to properly care for women’s health. The World Health Organization, WHO, has listed the top 5 factors that lead to maternal deaths, and these are severe bleeding, infections, high blood pressure, complications in delivery or an unsafe abortion (World). Most all those factors could be prevented or treated if lower income areas had the resources they need. This is an exceptionally important issue because thousands of babies are born every 24 hours and women should not fear their healthcare system. The lack of resources is not the only reason why these women continue to suffer, many families face transportation limitations to get to doctors, have a lack of education on women’s health in general or the societal norm is for women to not be cared for (World). All these risks leave women vulnerable and scared for the future without a proper solution in sight. The need for trained doctors, nurses and midwives is high in low-income areas so that women can feel confident in their treatments.
In Türkiye, there have been significant advancements in helping women get the healthcare they need. The rate of maternal deaths is a steady decrease, and Türkiye is continuing to make improvements. Since 1974, the statistics have gone from 208 deaths per 100,000 healthy births down to 13 deaths per 100,000 healthy births in 2021. One of the most helpful improvements made was shown in a study that having midwives make in-home visits every 3 to 4 months for young women and adults helped to take proper measures and precautions for the expectant mothers and educate them on what to expect (Yüksel). There also was more rural treatment and health centers built to make accessibility easier for the people who struggled with transportation. The lack of education on unwanted/unplanned pregnancies, limited access to groups such as planned parenthood and having to break down the gender inequalities is holding back additional progress. (Yüksel). There are roughly around 800 maternal deaths that happen a day globally, which added up to 287,000 women losing their lives to preventable measures in 2020. All these things are still a work in progress for Türkiye, but the improvements will not go unnoticed, and the hope is to spread them to other countries as well.
The first solution that would help to make great improvements around the world is to implement what Türkiye has already done; focus on building health treatment centers where the people can get to them and provide midwives for check-ins and wellness checks. Along with this, making an educational organization that focuses on bringing facts and information to the people will provide expecting families with the resources they need to know about what they are experiencing. This organization would provide courses and classes as well as books and pamphlets filled with the health education they need. Education is one of the greatest powers a person can have and all information to have easy access to the information that could save their life can change the world.
Work cited
World Health Organization. (n.d.). Maternal mortality. World Health Organization. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/maternal-mortality
Yüksel-Kaptanoğlu, İlknur. “Examining expert views on maternal mortality in Turkey: A qualitative study.” Examining expert views on maternal mortality in Turkey: A qualitative study, public health nursing, 3 June 2024, onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/phn.13336. Accessed 24 Nov. 2025.
