Maternal Mortality Rises Sharply Again in Zabaykalsky Krai

The region recorded zero maternal deaths in 2023, but the rate has risen significantly in 2024 and 2025, according to health ministry data.

Jan 25, 2026

Data shows the maternal mortality rate in the Siberian region fluctuated over a recent decade.
Source:
Yevgenia Bikunova / Gorodskiye Media

Zabaykalsky Krai has shown unstable dynamics of maternal mortality over the past 10 years: from a zero rate in 2023 to a sharp increase in 2021 and 2025. The region failed to maintain the zero-case result in 2023. This follows from data provided to Chita.Ru by the regional Ministry of Health in response to a request.

The Ministry of Health provided data on maternal mortality per 100,000 live births. This unit of measurement is an international standard of the World Health Organization (WHO).

According to the data presented, the maternal mortality rate in Zabaykalsky Krai (per 100,000 live births) changed unevenly between 2016 and 2025. In 2016–2017, the rate remained at 25–28 cases, then dropped sharply to 7.4 in 2018. However, in 2019–2020, mortality again approached 24 cases.

The most alarming was 2021, when the rate reached 50.0 — the maximum for the entire decade. The high level persisted in 2022 (44.9). The years 2021 and 2022 coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2023, the region demonstrated a unique result — zero maternal mortality — but it did not hold. In the last two years, maternal mortality has been rising again: in 2024 the rate was 10.0, and in 2025 it rose to 33.4 — higher than in all 10 years, except for the COVID-19 years of 2021 and 2022.

Earlier, the Ministry of Health linked the decline in maternal mortality in 2024 to an increase in the number of emergency rooms. At that time, only one case was registered. The infant mortality rate in Zabaykalsky Krai also reached a minimum in 2024.