Improving maternal health remains a priority for the World Health Organization (WHO) and the EU. Although maternal mortality rates remain high in many regions globally, in the WHO European Region the maternal mortality rate declined by more than 50% between 2000 and 2020.

Care by skilled health professionals before, during and after childbirth can save the lives of women and newborns. That is why this year’s World Health Day, on 7 April 2025, focuses on drastically enhancing maternal and newborn health on a global scale. The WHO aims to raise awareness, provide useful health information, advocate for investments, and encourage collective action.

HaDEA manages EU-funded projects under the programmes EU4Health, Horizon Europe and Horizon 2020 that are committed to improving the health of mothers and babies.

Horizon

The recently finished Horizon 2020 project ALERT has achieved significant outcomes in the care for mothers and children in 16 hospitals in 4 countries in Africa – Benin, Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda: the perinatal mortality was reduced by 25% across these sites. This remarkable outcome was achieved through the co-design of interventions to define midwifery professionalism, the development of a training package that includes leadership mentoring and the improvement of quality care at childbirth – combined with the development of a perinatal e-registry to allow for impact calculation.

The project’s interventions could improve newborn health outcomes in hospitals at a reasonable cost in Sub-Saharan Africa, where high mortality and limited resources are common.

BornToGetThere, another recently finished Horizon 2020 project, has significantly enhanced early detection, surveillance, and intervention for infants at high risk of Cerebral Palsy (CP). This project has delivered tangible benefits by being the first initiative to develop and implement an International Clinical Practice Guideline across multiple countries, such as Italy, Denmark, Netherlands, Georgia, Sri Lanka and remote populations in Australia (Remote Queensland and Western Australia). It has also provided stakeholders with valuable educational resources. The project aims to extend training to more European countries as well as its methodology to other paediatric conditions.

The project managed to:

• Train over 1000 healthcare professionals in cutting-edge tools for the early detection and management of infants with CP and their families;
• Screen more than 5000 babies, identifying over 500 as high-risk for CP, and subsequently referring them to specialised intervention programmes.

The ongoing HIGH Horizons project examines how rising heat from climate change affects the health of pregnant and postpartum women, newborns, young children and maternity care health workers. As part of an expert group convened by the WHO, this Horizon Europe project aims to develop population-level heat-health indicators. Furthermore, HIGH Horizons is testing a prototype of a personalised heat-health early warning mobile app.

The project is also refining a tool to reduce the carbon footprint and heat of health facilities, enhancing overall wellbeing.

EU4Health

Mind the Mum is a project aiming at improving perinatal mental health (PMH) by designing tools and interventions to support mothers. For this purpose, the project is:

• Conducting nationwide needs analysis in Cyprus and Slovenia, for the transfer of lessons learnt and best practices from Poland and Spain;
• Building partnerships between health professionals, decision-makers and parent activists to co-develop effective prevention measures;
• Promoting policies and professional trainings to address maternal mental health conditions;
• Raising public awareness, reducing stigma and encouraging dialogues on PMH.

IMAGINE-HMB is working towards developing harmonised, evidence-based guidelines that ensure the safety and quality of donor human milk (DHM) to implement the 2024 EU Regulation on standards of quality and safety for substances of human origin intended for human application.

The project encompasses several objectives:

• Creating a DHM expert forum;
• Drafting guidelines for the implementation of technical standards and for the adherence to oversight requirements;
• Establishing a comprehensive implementation plan to support human milk banks;
• Creating a post-project strategy for ongoing support and to ensure up-to-date guidelines;
• Providing a training programme and digital tools for professionals.

Relevant links

World Health Day – healthy beginnings, hopeful futures

Background

Horizon Europe is the research and innovation programme of the EU for the period 2021-2027. The aims of Cluster 1 ‘Health’ include improving and protecting the health and well-being of citizens of all ages by generating new knowledge, developing innovative solutions and integrating where relevant a gender perspective to prevent, diagnose, monitor, treat and cure diseases. Horizon 2020 (H2020) was the EU’s multiannual funding programme between 2014 and 2020.

EU4Health is the fourth and largest of the EU health programmes. The EU4Health programme goes beyond an ambitious response to the COVID-19 crisis to address the resilience of European healthcare systems. The programme provides funding to national authorities, health organisations and other bodies through grants and public procurement, contributing to a healthier Europe. HaDEA manages the vast majority of the total EU4Health budget and implements the programme by managing calls for proposals and calls for tenders.