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Data

Share of mothers receiving at least four antenatal visits during pregnancy

What you should know about this indicator

How is this data described by its producer?

Rationale

Antenatal care (ANC) coverage is an indicator of access and use of health care during pregnancy. The antenatal period presents opportunities for reaching pregnant women with interventions that may be vital to their health and wellbeing and that of their infants. Receiving antenatal care at least four times increases the likelihood of receiving effective maternal health interventions during the antenatal period. This is one of the indicators in the Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health (2016-2030) Monitoring Framework, and one of the tracer indicators of health services for the universal health coverage (SDG indicator 3.8.1).

Definition

The percentage of women aged 15-49 with a live birth in a given time period that received antenatal care four or more times. Due to data limitations, it is not possible to determine the type of provider for each visit.

Numerator:
the number of women aged 15-49 with a live birth in a given time period that received antenatal care four or more times.
Denominator:
total number of women aged 15-49 with a live birth in the same period.

Method of measurement

The number of women aged 15-49 with a live birth in a given time period that received antenatal care four or more times during pregnancy is expressed as a percentage of women aged 15-49 with a live birth in the same period (number of women aged 15-49 attended at least four times during pregnancy by any provider for reasons related to the pregnancy/total number of women aged 15-49 with a live birth) *100. The ANC4+ indicator is based on a standard question that asks if and how many times the health of the woman was checked during pregnancy. Unlike antenatal care coverage (at least one visit), the indicator antenatal care coverage (at least four visits) includes care given by any provider, not just by skilled health personnel. This is because the key national level household surveys do not collect information on type of provider for each visit. Household surveys that can generate this indicator includes Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS), Fertility and Family Surveys (FFS), Reproductive Health Surveys (RHS) and other surveys based on similar methodologies. Registry/facility reporting system can be used where the coverage is high, usually in high-income countries.

Method of estimation

WHO compiles empirical data from nationally-representative household surveys . Before data are included into the global databases, WHO undertake a process of data verification that includes correspondence with field offices to clarify any questions regarding estimates.

Share of mothers receiving at least four antenatal visits during pregnancy
The percentage of women aged 15-49 with a live birth in a given time period that received antenatal care four or more times. Due to data limitations, it is not possible to determine the type of provider for each visit. Numerator:
the number of women aged 15-49 with a live birth in a given time period that received antenatal care four or more times.
Denominator:
total number of women aged 15-49 with a live birth in the same period.
Source
World Health Organization - Global Health Observatory (2025) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
May 19, 2025
Next expected update
May 2026
Date range
1990–2023
Unit
%

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

World Health Organization – Global Health Observatory

The GHO data repository is WHO's gateway to health-related statistics for its 194 Member States. It provides access to over 1000 indicators on priority health topics including mortality and burden of diseases, the Millennium Development Goals (child nutrition, child health, maternal and reproductive health, immunization, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, neglected diseases, water and sanitation), non communicable diseases and risk factors, epidemic-prone diseases, health systems, environmental health, violence and injuries, equity among others.

Retrieved on
May 19, 2025
Retrieved from
https://www.who.int/data/gho
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
World Health Organization. 2025. Global Health Observatory data repository. http://www.who.int/gho/en/.

The GHO data repository is WHO's gateway to health-related statistics for its 194 Member States. It provides access to over 1000 indicators on priority health topics including mortality and burden of diseases, the Millennium Development Goals (child nutrition, child health, maternal and reproductive health, immunization, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, neglected diseases, water and sanitation), non communicable diseases and risk factors, epidemic-prone diseases, health systems, environmental health, violence and injuries, equity among others.

Retrieved on
May 19, 2025
Retrieved from
https://www.who.int/data/gho
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
World Health Organization. 2025. Global Health Observatory data repository. http://www.who.int/gho/en/.

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

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Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Share of mothers receiving at least four antenatal visits during pregnancy”. Our World in Data (2026). Data adapted from World Health Organization. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260304-094028/grapher/share-of-mothers-receiving-at-least-four-antenatal-visits-during-pregnancy.html [online resource] (archived on March 4, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

World Health Organization - Global Health Observatory (2025) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

World Health Organization - Global Health Observatory (2025) – processed by Our World in Data. “Share of mothers receiving at least four antenatal visits during pregnancy” [dataset]. World Health Organization, “Global Health Observatory” [original data]. Retrieved April 1, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260304-094028/grapher/share-of-mothers-receiving-at-least-four-antenatal-visits-during-pregnancy.html (archived on March 4, 2026).

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Data API

Use these URLs to programmatically access this chart's data and configure your requests with the options below. Our documentation provides more information on how to use the API, and you can find a few code examples below.

Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-mothers-receiving-at-least-four-antenatal-visits-during-pregnancy.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false
Metadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-mothers-receiving-at-least-four-antenatal-visits-during-pregnancy.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false

Code examples

Examples of how to load this data into different data analysis tools.

Excel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-mothers-receiving-at-least-four-antenatal-visits-during-pregnancy.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests

# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-mothers-receiving-at-least-four-antenatal-visits-during-pregnancy.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})

# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-mothers-receiving-at-least-four-antenatal-visits-during-pregnancy.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()
R
library(jsonlite)

# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-mothers-receiving-at-least-four-antenatal-visits-during-pregnancy.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")

# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-mothers-receiving-at-least-four-antenatal-visits-during-pregnancy.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-mothers-receiving-at-least-four-antenatal-visits-during-pregnancy.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear