When the Visits Stopped: Maternal Health in Nepal

PRENATAL VISITS, ONE BIRTHING CENTER, DEWAHI GONAHI, RAUTAHAT RELATIVE VOLUME OVER TIME

Community health workers once visited pregnant women at home to flag warning signs and escort them to care. When the program funding it was cancelled, those visits stopped, and the number of women coming in for prenatal checks fell by roughly half.

One winter, one family

In December, a young mother named Kabita Mukhiya spent weeks in pain at home, 28 weeks pregnant, with no one to tell her it was an emergency.

The outreach workers who once visited her village had stopped coming after the funding that trained and equipped them was withdrawn. Kabita died of eclampsia, with severe anemia as a contributing factor. Both conditions are usually caught by regular prenatal care. She left behind two young children, five-year-old Sonam and three-year-old Yubraj, now living with their grandmother in Nepal's Rautahat district, one of the country's poorest and least-literate regions.

Her story isn't isolated. The Associated Press documented similar losses across Nepal's rural districts, and researchers estimate the toll extends far beyond one country.

Original reporting by The Associated Press, "USAID fallout: In Nepal, when the aid workers stopped coming, the women and babies started dying," Aug 2026. Read the full investigation on NBC News (no paywall) →

~50% drop in prenatal visits at one Rautahat birthing center since the funding cuts

14M+ deaths projected globally by 2030 due to foreign aid funding cuts, per a Lancet study, including 4.5M children under 5

~1M women and girls denied contraceptive care every week worldwide since USAID's withdrawal, per the Guttmacher Institute

The gap left behind can still be partly filled.

One Heart Worldwide is a U.S. 501(c)(3) that has trained birth attendants and equipped rural birthing centers in Nepal since 2010, the same kind of work the canceled program did. They're independently verified and actively responding in the districts hit hardest.

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This page links directly to One Heart Worldwide's own donation channel. It does not collect, process, or touch any funds itself. Verify any charity independently before giving: Charity Navigator and GlobalGiving's own vetting are good starting points.

One winter, one family

The gap left behind can still be partly filled.

Most people who could help have never heard of this.