Health ministry showcases digital maternal death tracking reforms at World Health Assembly
By Chemtai Kirui | Geneva
At the 79th World Health Assembly in Geneva on Wednesday, the Ministry of Health unveiled an ambitious digital overhaul of how maternal and newborn deaths are tracked—an effort aimed at moving public hospitals away from delayed paperwork and quiet systemic failures toward real-time accountability.
Speaking during a high-level side event convened by the Council of Governors on the margins of the annual World Health Organization assembly, Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale described the reforms as part of a broader push to rebuild trust and responsiveness within the country’s strained public health system.
“We are building resilience from the community upward,” Duale told delegates, framing the initiative as central to the government’s Taifa Care health reforms and its wider push toward digitally linked universal health coverage.
The reforms include the digitisation of the Maternal and Perinatal Death Surveillance and Response (MPDSR) system—a process the Ministry of Health says is shifting maternal death reviews from paper files stacked in hospital offices to live electronic audits integrated into Kenya’s national Health Information System (KHIS/DHIS2).
The reforms target one of the public health sector’s most painful realities: women and newborns continuing to die from complications doctors largely know how to prevent.
Government estimates show roughly 5,000 women and 30,000 newborns die each year from preventable maternal and neonatal complications, with postpartum hemorrhage, sepsis and eclampsia remaining among the leading causes. The maternal mortality ratio stands at 355 deaths per 100,000 live births, according to the 2022 Demographic and Health Survey.
Weighed against these numbers, nearly 90 percent of births are attended by skilled health workers, yet many facilities still struggle during obstetric emergencies because of blood shortages, oxygen failures, delayed referrals and overstretched maternity wards. Ministry assessments show only about 37 percent of facilities currently meet the standards required for Basic Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care.
Under the new digital system, every maternal or newborn death occurring within a facility is expected to undergo a clinical audit within seven days at facility, county and national levels.
But unlike traditional mortality reviews—which frontline workers have often viewed as punitive exercises—the reforms are being anchored around what officials repeatedly described in Geneva as a “No Name, No Blame” culture.
The approach, outlined in national clinical guidelines, is intended to encourage doctors, nurses and administrators to openly document failures without fear of disciplinary targeting. The reviews instead focus on identifying breakdowns inside the health system itself: delayed ambulance referrals, broken blood-bank cold chains, medicine stock-outs or staffing shortages during emergencies.
The Ministry of Health is also developing a digital “action tracker” designed to monitor whether hospitals implement recommendations emerging from those reviews —an attempt to close a gap that has long frustrated maternal health specialists, where audits are completed but corrective action quietly stalls.
The system’s reach is expected to extend well beyond hospitals.
More than 107,000 Community Health Promoters equipped with mobile reporting tools are expected to electronically notify authorities of maternal or newborn deaths occurring outside health facilities within 24 hours. Director-General for Health Patrick Amoth has said the expanded digital community health network is intended to improve visibility in remote and underserved areas where deaths frequently go undocumented or are reported too late for meaningful intervention.
Dr. Amoth linked the rollout to the country’s participation in the global Healthy Birth Initiative, an estimated KES 11 billion (USD 85 million) five-year programme targeting 12 counties that account for more than half of neonatal deaths nationally.
Those counties include Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, Nakuru, Uasin Gishu, Kakamega, Trans Nzoia, Kiambu, Kericho, Kilifi, Garissa and West Pokot.
Medical Services Principal Secretary Dr. Ouma Oluga said the reforms were intended to shift maternal death surveillance from passive compliance reporting toward “active accountability” where resource gaps and repeated institutional failures become visible in real time.
Still, county referral hospitals remain under pressure from staffing shortages and rising patient loads, while clinicians are expected to review large volumes of maternal and newborn deaths under strict reporting timelines. Technical reviews have also identified persistent gaps in documenting deaths occurring inside intensive care units and emergency departments—blind spots that could distort national surveillance dashboards.
The broader reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health roadmap underpinning the reforms is projected to require roughly KES 460 billion (USD 3.5 billion) over five years, according to ministry planning documents.
This year’s assembly was dominated by concerns over shrinking donor funding, with African governments increasingly pushing for greater control over healthcare financing, pharmaceutical manufacturing and disease surveillance.
On the sidelines of the meeting, Duale formally accepted World Health Organization recognition marking the elimination of Human African Trypanosomiasis—commonly known as sleeping sickness—before holding talks with WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on pharmaceutical regulation, Ebola preparedness and the country’s expanding role as a regional hub for multilateral health coordination.
