A Child Is Born
Paskalina’s delivery could have gone terribly wrong. She survived thanks to the care she received at Haydom Lutheran Hospital in Tanzania.
How NCA Works to Ensure Safer Births
NCA works to make childbirth safer. Maternal and newborn mortality has been drastically reduced in parts of Tanzania and Nigeria. Here is how NCA is working on this topic.
Text: Åsne Gullikstad Photo: Håvard Bjelland
Every year, around 300,000 women worldwide die from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. According to UNICEF, 2.3 million newborns die during their first month of life.
Norwegian Church Aid works to reduce these numbers. In Tanzania and Nigeria, significant progress has been made in reducing mortality among mothers and newborns in areas where systematic efforts have been undertaken to ensure safer births.
“The results achieved in both Tanzania and Nigeria are remarkable. They demonstrate that systematic efforts can significantly reduce the number of deaths among mothers and newborns,” says Haldis Kårstad, Senior Adviser for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights at NCA.
NCA is also working to ensure safer births in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Below you can read more about how NCA works to promote safer births:
Tanzania:
In Tanzania, sustained and systematic efforts through the Safer Births Bundle of Care (SBBC) programme have produced results that have attracted international attention: over a three-year period (2021–2023), maternal mortality was reduced by 75 percent and newborn mortality by 40 percent across the 30 health facilities in five regions where the programme was implemented.
The results were published in 2025 in one of the world’s most prestigious medical journals, the New England Journal of Medicine.
Haydom Lutheran Hospital in Tanzania leads the programme, which is a collaboration between Norwegian researchers, Norad, the Norwegian company Laerdal Global Health, and the Tanzanian authorities.
NCA has partnered with Haydom Lutheran Hospital since 2003 and has been responsible for overseeing Norwegian financial support to the hospital since 2015.
The success of the SBBC project is based on a combination of interventions delivered as an integrated package of care. Laerdal Global Health has developed technical equipment tailored to local conditions, such as devices for newborn resuscitation and fetal heart monitoring. Healthcare workers actively use data to improve performance and regularly practise realistic clinical scenarios. In addition, a culture of learning has been fostered, where staff focus on learning from mistakes rather than assigning blame when adverse events occur.
“This programme has had an enormous impact,” says Pascal Mdoe, Hospital Director at Haydom Lutheran Hospital.
Norwegian Church Aid has been present in Tanzania since 2006, building on partnerships with faith-based organizations that date back to the 1960s.
You can read stories from Haydom and learn more about the work to ensure safer births in Tanzania here, and about Norwegian Church Aid’s role here.
Nigeria:
Following the strong results of the SBBC program in Tanzania, the same program has been introduced in Nigeria.
Norwegian Church Aid and the Nigerian authorities have joined forces to provide safer hospital births for women in the conflict-affected Borno region in northern Nigeria. The Northeast Nigeria has one of the highest mortality rates in the world for women giving birth and newborn babies. The program was launched in 2025.
The results were remarkable: the number of stillbirths was reduced by 68 percent, and maternal deaths were reduced by 54 percent at the healthcare facilities participating in the program in Borno, according to 2026 data.
“There is no doubt that the new method and equipment are saving both mothers and babies. It is simply an incredibly important project and professionally inspiring for us midwives as well,” says midwife Ashe Muhammad at State Specialist Hospital in Maiduguri, Borno.
The SBBC program is now being expanded across Nigeria through an initiative led by UNICEF and funded by the European Union.
NCA has been present in Nigeria since 2017.
You can read more about the SBBC program i Nigeria here.
DR Congo:
In DRC, NCA has launched a Safe Deliveries in emergency settings project, funded by the Norwegian Signe Marie Foundation. The main goal with this project is for NCA to contribute to reducing mortality and morbidity among mothers and newborns in conflict affected settings. The interventions will be introduced in selected areas of South Kivu Province in the eastern part of the country, with implementation starting in 2026.
NCA will:
- Strengthen the capacity of healthcare workers on safe delivery through training and mentorship.
- Provide equipment kits to help ensure minimum standards for safe childbirth.
- Distribute “mother-and-baby kits” to support basic hygiene and care for mothers and their newborn children.
- Increase community awareness of maternal and newborn health, including making it easier for pregnant women to access health facilities when warning signs are detected.
Read more stories from our work on safer births
– A Part of the Success
Norwegian Church Aid has supported Haydom Lutheran Hospital for many years. “Norwegian Church Aid is very important to us and is part of this success,” says the hospital’s managing director, Paschal Mdoe.
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