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Nepal
Photo © 2023 UNICEF / Rabik Upadhayay
On 9 August 2022, at the Paropakar Maternity and Women’s Hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal, Sunita Rai (left) and husband Rajan (right) with their newborn son. Sunita had come to the hospital to seek treatment after her son was born prematurely. Seeing that Sunita was unable to breastfeed her child, healthworkers quickly referred her to the hospital’s newly-launched ‘Amrit Kosh’, the first human milk bank to be established in the country, which provided Sunita’s baby with breastmilk donated by other mothers.
Every Woman Every Newborn in Nepal
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Photo © 2017 UNICEF / Reinier van Oorsouw
Tulsi Joshi, aged 32, holding a baby of whose mother she has followed throughout her pregnancy and encouraged her to deliver her baby at a local health clinic (instead of a home delivery).
National mortality targets
Maternal mortality ratio
70 per 100,000 live births by 2030
Stillbirth rate
13 per 1,000 total births by 2035
Neonatal mortality rate
11 per 1,000 live births by 2035
Progress to meet the national maternal, newborn mortality and stillbirth reduction targets
Photo © 2017 UNICEF / Reinier van Oorsouw
Janaki Odh’s 16-day old baby girl Nisha in Joshibunga, a village in Baitadi District, far western Nepal.
Sixteen days before we captured this story, she gave birth to a baby girl, Nisha. She had a home delivery, but halfway through she noticed that she had to find a trained midwife, which she found in the (UNICEF supported) health clinic down in the village centre. She was afraid as she had a neighbour who died during child birth, hence was afraid that this might have happened to her as well. Her husband recently passed away, before the delivery.
Progress to meet Every Woman Every Newborn Everywhere coverage targets
MNH Acceleration Plan highlights
In 2024, some of Nepal’s MNH Acceleration Plan priorities include:
- Improve the quality of eight antenatal care visits
- Strengthen and scale up kangaroo mother care
- Strengthen the quality of midwifery education as per the standards of the International Confederation of Midwives.
Photo © 2017 UNICEF / attribution needed
Photo © 2021 UNICEF /
On 27 June 2021, healthworker Pinki Sah attends to newborn Sunny Mahara in the NICU at the Janakpur Provincial Hospital in Dhanusha District in southern Nepal. The hospital is among two health facilities in the country where support for improved access to and use of oxygen through a UNICEF initiative, funded by USAID, is strengthening healthworkers’ abilities to save precious young lives.
Quality of care in Nepal
As part of its efforts to reduce maternal and newborn mortality and stillbirths, Nepal is taking steps to improve the quality of maternal and newborn health. (Link to the quality of care internal page). These include:
- Strengthen and scale up the national maternal and perinatal death surveillance and response (MPDSR) system
- Improve the quality of intrapartum care
- Expand and strengthen the quality of care for small and sick newborns
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