Maternal and newborn health benefit from adequate antenatal care and safe delivery services, including care provided by skilled health professionals and access to health facilities for childbirth, which help reduce the risk of complications and infections (see also indicators on family planning and infant and young child feeding in Chapter 4) (Measure Evaluation, 2019[1]). Reflecting their importance, Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3.7 calls for universal access to sexual and reproductive healthcare services, including family planning, information and education, and the integration of reproductive health into national strategies and programmes by 2030.
In LAC countries, most pregnant women receive the recommended minimum of four antenatal care visits, although coverage varies substantially across countries. On average, 86% of women in LAC receive at least four antenatal visits, compared with 93% across OECD countries. Coverage is particularly high in several countries including Uruguay and Puerto Rico (98%), Peru and Guyana (95%), and Brazil, Costa Rica and Trinidad and Tobago (94%), Mexico and Saint Lucia (90%), the Bahamas and Nicaragua (92%), and the Dominican Republic and Belize (93%). Moreover, some countries place low importance in collecting these indicators given that it has been high for many years and is considered a completed goal. This is the case for several OECD countries. However, coverage remains considerably lower in some parts of the region. Grenada (55%), Saint Kitts and Nevis (59%), Haiti (67%) and Suriname (68%) report the lowest levels, suggesting important gaps in access to maternal health services (Figure 5.7).
Most births in LAC are attended by skilled health professionals such as doctors, nurses or midwives, and the vast majority occur in health facilities, indicating that safe delivery care is now nearly universal across much of the region (Figure 5.8). Coverage of births attended by skilled personnel is close to 100% in many countries, including Chile, Cuba, Uruguay and several Caribbean countries, and reaches 98‑99% in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic. Coverage remains somewhat lower in Ecuador (96%), Peru and Belize (95%), Honduras (94%) and Panama (93%), and particularly in Paraguay (91%), Mexico (88%) and Bolivia (72%) (Figure 5.8 – left panel). Similarly, most deliveries take place in health facilities, with levels around 99‑100% in countries such as Chile, Cuba, Uruguay, Brazil and Costa Rica. Lower rates are observed in Panama, Honduras and Belize (around 92%), and especially in Guatemala (71%) and Haiti (67%), where a larger share of births still occur outside formal health facilities (Figure 5.8 – right panel).
In many OECD countries, the share of facility births is no longer systematically monitored because home births increasingly reflect parental choice rather than lack of access to care, often occurring with trained midwives and appropriate referral systems. By contrast, where facility delivery remains incomplete, births outside health facilities may still signal barriers to access to skilled care. Overall, the high coverage observed across most LAC countries suggests that access to professional delivery care has largely become a standard component of maternal services. As coverage approaches universality in many countries, the indicator becomes less informative for distinguishing health system performance. While it remains important to monitor to ensure continued access to safe delivery care, future assessments of maternal care quality in the region may increasingly rely on more nuanced indicators of quality and outcomes during childbirth.
