Maternal mortality and adverse child outcomes for women with disabilities: A systematic review and meta-analysis
Discuss this preprint
Start a discussion What are Sciety discussions?Listed in
This article is not in any list yet, why not save it to one of your lists.Abstract
Background
Reducing maternal mortality and improving newborn and child outcomes are targets of the Sustainable Development Goals. Evidence on how these efforts are reaching women with disabilities is lacking.
Objectives
to estimate global, relative inequalities in stillbirth, neonatal, infant, and maternal mortality for women with disabilities compared to women without disabilities.
Methods
We searched MEDLINE, Global Health, PsycINFO, and Embase from 1 January 2015 to 28 January 2026, to identify articles on disability and stillbirth, neonatal, infant, and maternal mortality. We included studies that had a recognised measure of disability as an exposure, a control group of women without disabilities and at least one of the four outcomes. A pooled estimate for each outcome was done using a random-effects meta-analysis of the minimally adjusted results.
Results
We identified over 4,300 titles, of which 17 papers were eligible for inclusion. Almost all data came from nationally-representative data sources in high-income countries. We found that women with disabilities were 4.66 times more likely (95% C.I. 1.70-12.75) to experience maternal mortality compared to women without disabilities. Women with disabilities were also 37% more likely to have a stillbirth and 27% and 48% more likely to have a neonatal or infant death compared to women without disabilities, respectively.
Conclusions
Women with disabilities consistently have higher incidence of maternal, stillbirth, neonatal, and infant mortality, even in countries that have relatively low incidence of these outcomes. There is a lack of evidence globally and particularly from LMICs, and on effective interventions to improve maternal and infant outcomes for women with disabilities.
