Maternal health refers to the health of women during pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period. While motherhood is often a positive and fulfilling experience, for too many women it is associated with suffering, ill-health and even death.
It encompasses the health care dimensions of family planning, preconception, prenatal, and postnatal care in order to ensure a positive and fulfilling experience, in most cases, and reduce maternal morbidity and mortality, in other cases.[1] Maternal health revolves around the health and wellness of women, particularly when they are pregnant, at the time they give birth, and during child-raising.
We use maternal health as an umbrella term to cover all the personal and physical factors, social and cultural issues, health conditions, policies, practices and collective circumstances in a woman’s life and body that enable her to emerge from her pregnancy and birth thriving. Maternal health starts during adolescence, well before motherhood, and lasts throughout a woman’s reproductive life and beyond menopause.