Maternal Health in Nepal Progress, Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

Reducing maternal mortality and achieving universal access to reproductive health care are critical components of meeting the Millennium Development Goal (MDG). Nepal had revealed the efforts to achieve the targets of Second Long Term Health Plan, National Health Policy, Millennium Development Goal, and National Health Sector Programme and so on. This paper aims to highlight some of the progress, challenges and possible solutions for better improvements. The results published in different journals across the globe from 1995-2015 were reviewed and discussed in a Nepalese contexts. Although different indicators of maternal health in Nepal had shown the improvements from 1991 to 2015, there are a lot of challenges on maternal health. Some of the challenges are lack of awareness about maternal health services, underutilization of maternal health services, social disparities in maternal health, political instability, and low socio-economic status of women, teenage marriage and early pregnancy, unsafe abortion, mal distribution of human resource for health, unavailability and unaffordability of quality care, superstition and indigenous practice. In spite of these challenges, there are several factors which need to be considered to improve maternal health in Nepal.