Women's deaths are being missed and it's not just about childbirth
WHO/Europe publishes new analysis on women's health and mortality across the Region
Copenhagen, 19 August 2026
The headline finding:
Most women's deaths happen outside the maternal period, yet the way health systems record and respond to women's deaths still centres on maternal causes.
Key figures for journalists:
- Over 3,500 women died from maternal causes between 2018 and 2022 across the European Region, almost all of them preventable, despite 98% of births taking place in health facilities and 99% attended by skilled staff.
- Maternal mortality progress has stalled since 2013, with rates rising in eastern and northern Europe.
- A 20-year-old East-West mortality gap hasn't closed. Women in central Asia, eastern Europe and western Asia face substantially higher mortality than women in northern, southern and western Europe.
- Women over 45 are around 14% more likely than men to have their cause of death recorded as "ill-defined" (frailty, cardiac arrest, unspecified dementia), a data gap that obscures what's actually killing them.
- Violence kills more women in the Region than maternal causes do, and it doesn't stop with age, it continues into older age too, while remaining underreported due to stigma.
- Women remain underrepresented in clinical research, particularly on cardiovascular disease, which delays diagnosis and treatment.
Quote from WHO/Europe:
"Women are more than mothers, and health systems need to treat them that way," said Dr Natasha Azzopardi-Muscat, Director of Health Systems, WHO/Europe. "We're calling on Member States in the European Region to remove barriers to healthcare access for women and girls, close the data gaps that hide how women actually die, and embed violence prevention in national health policy."
Full piece:
Media contacts:
Bhanu Bhatnagar, bbhatnagar@who.int
Ramy Srour, srourr@who.int