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What you should know about this indicator

How is this data described by its producer?

In many countries, deliveries take place in unhygienic circumstances, putting mothers and their newborn babies at risk of a variety of life-threatening infections.

Maternal and Neonatal Tetanus (MNT) has been among the most common life-threatening consequences of unclean deliveries and umbilical cord care practices, and are indicators of inequity in access to immunization and other maternal, newborn, and child health services. When tetanus develops, mortality rates are extremely high, especially when appropriate medical care is not available, as is often the case in low-income countries.

This happens despite the fact that MNT deaths can be easily prevented by hygienic delivery and cord care practices, and/or by immunizing children and women with Tetanus Toxoid Containing Vaccines (TTCV), that are inexpensive and very efficacious, through the life course.

The Maternal and Neonatal Tetanus Elimination (MNTE) initiative aims to reduce MNT cases to such low levels that the disease is no longer a major public health problem. Unlike polio and smallpox, tetanus cannot be eradicated (tetanus spores are present in the environment worldwide), but through immunization of children, mothers, other women of reproductive age (WRA) and promotion of more hygienic deliveries and cord care practices, MNT can be eliminated (defined as less than one case of neonatal tetanus per 1000 live births in every district).

Elimination status of maternal and neonatal tetanus
Maternal neonatal tetanus is a life-threatening disease that occurs when newborns are infected with . It can be prevented through maternal vaccination and hygienic childbirth practices.
Source
World Health Organization (2026) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
October 5, 2026
Next expected update
October 2027
Date range
2000–2026

Related research and writing

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

Tetanus

Hannah Behrens, Sophie Ochmann, Bernadeta Dadonaite, and Max Roser

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

World Health Organization – Maternal and Neonatal Tetanus (MNT) Elimination

For each of the 59 countries originally classified as at risk of maternal and neonatal tetanus (MNT) in 1999, this tracks whether elimination of MNT has since been validated, and in which year.

The core of this compilation is WHO's Weekly Epidemiological Record report "Progress towards achieving and sustaining maternal and neonatal tetanus elimination – worldwide, 2000–2022", which gives per-country validation years through the end of 2022. Countries validated afterwards (reported 2023 onwards) are added from subsequent WHO/UNICEF announcements; each row's specific source is recorded alongside it.

Retrieved on
October 5, 2026
Retrieved from
https://iris.who.int/handle/10665/378241
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. Progress towards achieving and sustaining maternal and neonatal tetanus elimination – worldwide, 2000–2022. Weekly Epidemiological Record. 2024;99(29):381–393.

For each of the 59 countries originally classified as at risk of maternal and neonatal tetanus (MNT) in 1999, this tracks whether elimination of MNT has since been validated, and in which year.

The core of this compilation is WHO's Weekly Epidemiological Record report "Progress towards achieving and sustaining maternal and neonatal tetanus elimination – worldwide, 2000–2022", which gives per-country validation years through the end of 2022. Countries validated afterwards (reported 2023 onwards) are added from subsequent WHO/UNICEF announcements; each row's specific source is recorded alongside it.

Retrieved on
October 5, 2026
Retrieved from
https://iris.who.int/handle/10665/378241
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. Progress towards achieving and sustaining maternal and neonatal tetanus elimination – worldwide, 2000–2022. Weekly Epidemiological Record. 2024;99(29):381–393.

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.

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  • 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.
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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: Elimination status of maternal and neonatal tetanus”, part of the following publication: Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Max Roser (2016) - “Global Health”. Data adapted from World Health Organization. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20261005-133525/grapher/year-of-maternal-neonatal-tetanus-mnt-elimination.html [online resource] (archived on October 5, 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 (2026) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

World Health Organization (2026) – processed by Our World in Data. “Elimination status of maternal and neonatal tetanus” [dataset]. World Health Organization, “Maternal and Neonatal Tetanus (MNT) Elimination” [original data]. Retrieved October 7, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20261005-133525/grapher/year-of-maternal-neonatal-tetanus-mnt-elimination.html (archived on October 5, 2026).

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Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/year-of-maternal-neonatal-tetanus-mnt-elimination.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false
Metadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/year-of-maternal-neonatal-tetanus-mnt-elimination.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/year-of-maternal-neonatal-tetanus-mnt-elimination.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/year-of-maternal-neonatal-tetanus-mnt-elimination.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/year-of-maternal-neonatal-tetanus-mnt-elimination.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()
R
library(jsonlite)

# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/year-of-maternal-neonatal-tetanus-mnt-elimination.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")

# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/year-of-maternal-neonatal-tetanus-mnt-elimination.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/year-of-maternal-neonatal-tetanus-mnt-elimination.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear