Our World
in Data
Data

Share of mothers visited by a health professional during pregnancy

What you should know about this indicator

Pregnant women receiving prenatal care are the percentage of women attended at least once during pregnancy by skilled health personnel for reasons related to pregnancy.

Limitations and exceptions: For the indicators that are from household surveys, the year refers to the survey year. For more information, consult the original sources.

Statistical concept and methodology: Reproductive health is a state of physical and mental well-being in relation to the reproductive system and its functions and processes. Means of achieving reproductive health include education and services during pregnancy and childbirth, safe and effective contraception, and prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases. Complications of pregnancy and childbirth are the leading cause of death and disability among women of reproductive age in developing countries.

Good prenatal and postnatal care improves maternal health and reduces maternal and infant mortality. However, indicators on use of antenatal care services provide no information on the content or quality of the services. Data on antenatal care are obtained mostly from household surveys, which ask women who have had a live birth whether and from whom they received antenatal care.

Source
Multiple sources compiled by World Bank (2024) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
May 20, 2024
Next expected update
May 2025
Date range
1984–2021
Unit
%

Related research and writing

A dark blue background with a lighter blue world map superimposed over it. Yellow text that says Global Health by Our World in Data

Global Health

Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Max Roser

Explore charts that include this data

Infant mortality vs. prevalence of prenatal care

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

The World Development Indicators (WDI) is the primary World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially-recognized international sources. It presents the most current and accurate global development data available, and includes national, regional and global estimates.

Retrieved on
May 20, 2024
Retrieved from
https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/search/dataset/0037712/World-Development-Indicators
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 Bank's World Development Indicators (WDI).

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

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

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 visited by a health professional during pregnancy”. Our World in Data (2024). Data adapted from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and UNICEF (via World Bank). Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-mothers-receiving-at-least-one-antenatal-visit-during-pregnancy [online resource]
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:

Multiple sources compiled by World Bank (2024) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

Multiple sources compiled by World Bank (2024) – processed by Our World in Data. “Share of mothers visited by a health professional during pregnancy” [dataset]. Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and UNICEF (via World Bank), “World Development Indicators” [original data]. Retrieved November 24, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-mothers-receiving-at-least-one-antenatal-visit-during-pregnancy