🤰Maternal Mortality

How the Raw Value Is Calculated

The raw value is the maternal mortality ratio per 100,000 live births. It measures deaths from maternal causes during pregnancy, childbirth or within 42 days after termination of pregnancy, excluding accidental or incidental causes. Lower is better.

The primary source is World Bank indicator SH.STA.MMRT. It mirrors the joint estimate series from the Maternal Mortality Estimation Inter-Agency Group of WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA, the World Bank and UNDESA. Nomadino uses the latest non-empty annual value for each country; this update uses data through 2023.

The series is an international modeled estimate. This matters because civil registration, cause-of-death statistics and the recording of pregnancy status differ substantially by country. The joint UN estimate makes countries more comparable than many purely national raw reports.

The rating is calculated from the raw value on an inverse logarithmic scale: 5 deaths per 100,000 live births or lower receive 100 points, while 1,000 or higher receives 1 point. Between those anchors: rating = 100 - 99 * ln(raw value / 5) / ln(1000 / 5), rounded to whole points and bounded to 1-100.

The logarithmic scale is appropriate here because differences at low values remain medically and socially meaningful, while extreme high-risk situations would otherwise compress the whole ranking. A decline from 20 to 10 per 100,000 therefore remains visible without very high crisis values pushing all other countries to the top edge.

For countries and territories without a separate World Bank or UN MMEIG series, Nomadino uses maintained replacement values. These are derived from administering state, regional comparators, available direct values and bounded health-care, access and stability context. Replacement values remain visible in the same unit and use the same rating formula.

This indicator measures only maternal mortality per live birth. Skilled birth attendance, midwife access, emergency care, infant mortality, life expectancy, general care quality and conflict exposure are not mixed into the raw value; they serve at most as plausibility context for missing territories.