The Every Woman Every Newborn Everywhere (EWENE) Acceleration Plan places Kenya among 40 countries across sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia now implementing national maternal and newborn survival strategies in regions carrying the world’s highest mortality burden.
Every day in Kenya, about 20 women die while giving life. Another 90 newborns never survive their first month. Most die not from rare or incurable conditions, but from complications that health systems elsewhere manage routinely, such as haemorrhage, infection, obstructed labour, prematurity, and the compounding tragedy of delayed care.
Behind every statistic is a family permanently altered by loss: A mother who never returns home, a father left to raise children alone, a baby buried before receiving a name, or a household pushed deeper into poverty by emergency care costs and funeral expenses.
For Lavenda, a resident of Matopeni in Kayole, the tragedy began on an ordinary workday. Heavily pregnant and in need of money for food, she spent the day bent over, washing a client’s clothes by hand. When severe abdominal pain struck, she rushed more than five kilometres to a hospital in Njiru. But by the time she arrived, the delay had already cost her.
“I lost a lot of blood… I lost a lot of blood. And then I lost my baby,” she said through tears.
Lavenda’s story echoed through State House, Nairobi, as President William Ruto launched Kenya’s adoption of the Every Woman Every Newborn Everywhere (EWENE) Acceleration Plan 2026-2028 on May 28, 2026. A global maternal and newborn survival initiative backed by the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and UNFPA.
Alongside it, the government unveiled an immediate six-month Maternal and Newborn Health Rapid Results Initiative running through November 2026 that officials describe as an emergency-style national push to deliver measurable reductions in preventable deaths.
Kenya now joins 40 countries across sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia formally implementing national acceleration plans under the EWENE framework, targeting regions that together carry the world’s highest burden of maternal and newborn mortality.
The president framed the moment in unusually personal terms.
“Mama Rachel here, and I lost our firstborn son,” he said, referring to First Lady Rachel Ruto. “So, it’s not a far-off story. It’s a reality that we live through every day.”
He then turned to the structural failures driving the crisis. “We already know the greatest threats facing mothers and newborns: delays in seeking care, delays in reaching health facilities, and delays in receiving quality treatment once at those facilities. These challenges are often worsened by weak referral systems, shortages of essential medicines, and gaps in frontline healthcare services.”
There is low support for men navigating pregnancy loss, and poor male engagement in maternal health awareness
The grief was not confined to one household. Lawrence Omondi, maternal health advocate and founder of the Machozi ya Mwisho initiative, first lost a child to a stillbirth, then lost newborn twins. “We started this initiative because of the pain we went through as a family,” he said. “It’s the pain many Kenyans go through when they lose their newborns, and the pain many men go through when they lose their partners while giving birth.”
Omondi identified a less visible dimension of the crisis: the near-total absence of support systems for men navigating pregnancy loss, and the lack of male engagement in maternal health awareness. These are gaps that rarely appear in national strategies but compound grief into isolation.
The human cost, experts warn, extends far beyond the delivery room. Mothers are often the primary caregivers and economic anchors within households. Their deaths interrupt children’s education, destabilise families, and deepen poverty. Newborn deaths leave lasting psychological trauma that frequently goes undocumented and untreated, absorbed quietly into communities already stretched thin.
Speaking on behalf of development partners, Dr Neema Kimambo, acting WHO Representative to Kenya, described a continent in crisis. Africa accounts for nearly 70 per cent of all global maternal deaths and half of all newborn deaths. “Not because solutions don’t exist,” she said, “but because the systems to deliver them have not been built, sustained, or held to account at the pace required.”
Kenya’s gains have been real but uneven. Skilled birth attendance now reaches 89 per cent of deliveries, while 98 per cent of pregnant women attend at least one antenatal clinic visit. Yet access has not consistently translated into survival.
Dr Kimambo put her finger on the fracture: “The gap between access and outcomes, between a woman reaching a facility and receiving quality care that saves her life and that of her baby.” She paused. “These are not statistics. These are names. These are absences at dinner tables, at school gates. And they are economic losses to this country.”
That fracture was starkly visible in the testimony of Kajiado Woman Representative Leah Sopiato, who described two profoundly different childbirth experiences. Her first delivery, at home, was surrounded by attentive family. Her second, at a healthcare facility, ended with an attendant nurse completing her lunch while Sopiato waited through active labour alone, ignored, and eventually delivering by herself on a hospital chair.
Verbal abuse, discrimination, poor communication, and lack of dignified care discourage women from seeking skilled delivery services
“Giving birth is a thin line between life and death,” Sopiato said. “I hope that through this program, no other woman gives birth on a chair.”
Her account points to a critical but underreported driver of maternal mortality: disrespect and neglect inside maternity wards. Health experts increasingly document how verbal abuse, discrimination, poor communication, and a lack of dignified care discourage women, especially in marginalised and pastoralist communities, from seeking skilled delivery services altogether. Women avoid facilities not only because they are too far or too expensive, but because they have heard what happens inside them.
Health experts increasingly warn that disrespect, neglect, verbal abuse, discrimination, and poor communication inside maternity wards discourage women from seeking skilled delivery services, especially in marginalised communities.
To address these persistent failures, Kenya is now combining the EWENE Acceleration Plan with an immediate six-month Maternal and Newborn Health Rapid Results Initiative running through November 2026.
Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale said the initiative focuses not on discovering new solutions, but ensuring proven interventions reach women and newborns when they need them most.
“The challenge before us is not lack of knowledge of what works,” Duale said. “The challenge is ensuring that the right interventions reach every mother and every child at the time they are most needed.”
The six-month initiative will focus on five pillars: quality healthcare delivery, workforce strengthening, health financing, emergency preparedness, and accountability and innovation.
At the heart of the strategy is strengthening frontline healthcare systems where most preventable deaths occur. President Ruto flagged off specialised maternal and newborn equipment destined for 630 facilities across 20 high-burden counties. The package includes fully equipped maternity theatres, newborn intensive care equipment, oxygen concentrators, phototherapy lights, bilirubinometers, blood transfusion units, and oxygen support systems.
The government also plans to train and deploy 5,000 additional nurses and midwives nationwide.
“A skilled health worker, in the right place and at the right time, often represents the difference between life and death,” the president said.
The reforms also target one of Kenya’s biggest barriers to maternal care: cost. The National Treasury will allocate an additional Ksh4 billion to the Social Health Authority to cover premiums for pregnant women, ensuring mothers are not denied delivery services because they cannot pay.
Ksh2.3 billion has been allocated for new community health kits and SHIF enrolment for community health promoters
At the same time, the government plans to operationalise ambulance referral services under the Social Health Authority with reimbursement mechanisms aimed at preventing emergency referrals from stalling over costs.
Community health systems are also receiving renewed focus. President Ruto said the government continues to support more than 107,000 Community Health Promoters nationwide and will consolidate their stipends into a single payment system to reduce delays caused by fragmented county and national disbursement structures. An additional Ksh2.3 billion has been allocated for new community health kits and Social Health Insurance Fund enrolment for community health promoters.
Experts say such investments could significantly improve early pregnancy detection, referral systems, antenatal follow-up, and postnatal monitoring, particularly in remote and underserved communities.
The Kenya Medical Supplies Agency will also receive an additional Ksh1 billion for maternal and newborn health commodities, alongside Ksh2.5 billion for family planning supplies, on top of the Ksh10 billion already allocated in the national health budget.
The renewed push builds on earlier accountability mechanisms already being implemented across counties, particularly the inter-county Maternal and Perinatal Death Surveillance and Response (MPDSR) initiative. The program reviews maternal deaths, stillbirths, and neonatal deaths to identify avoidable failures and recommend corrective action. Abdullswamad Nassir said all 47 counties have now activated MPDSR committees, helping shift the conversation from merely counting deaths to understanding why mothers and newborns die.
Some counties have already reported improvements. Kiambu Level Five Hospital, for example, recorded seven months without a maternal death, while Nyandarua, Murang’a and Homa Bay counties have also documented progress after strengthening surveillance and accountability systems.
Nassir said counties are also investing in digital dashboards and GIS-enabled tracking systems to improve monitoring, referral coordination, and decision-making. Still, health experts caution that Kenya’s success will ultimately depend not only on equipment, funding, or declarations, but on sustained political commitment, accountability, and whether reforms reach women at the last mile.
The EWENE Acceleration Plan places Kenya among 40 countries across sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia now implementing national maternal and newborn survival acceleration plans in regions carrying the world’s highest mortality burden.
But the stakes extend beyond meeting global targets. The EWENE plan arrives at a moment of acute global financing pressure. Declining donor support is already threatening essential reproductive, maternal, and newborn health services across African countries, making domestic investment, county accountability, community-based care, and resilient primary health systems more consequential than ever.
