International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (IJTSRD) Volume 4 Issue 5, July-August 2020 Available Online: www.ijtsrd.com e-ISSN: 2456 – 6470 @ IJTSRD | Unique Paper ID – IJTSRD33033 | Volume – 4 | Issue – 5 | July-August 2020 Page 1120 Reducing Maternal and Child Mortality in West Africa: Improve Health Indicators for Mother and Child Well-Being Ahotovi Thomas Ahoto 1 , Lokmani Giri 2 , Stanley Kofi Alor 3 1 School of Management, Jiangsu University, Zhen-Jiang, China 2 Faculty of Health Science, University of Southern Denmark (USD), Odense, Denmark 3 School of Public Health, University of Ghana, Legon, Accra, Ghana ABSTRACT World Health Organization provides reliable information about health performance of countries around the global. In most of their periodical data, sub-Saharan Africa kept performing poorly in relation to most health indicators such as maternal mortality, child mortality, HIV AIDS rate, health financing, vaccination coverage for under 1year child and others. A major challenge in the health indicators is the high Total Fertility Rate of West African countries, with some countries recording Total Fertility Rate of six children per woman in her reproductive age. Many researchers have focused in Total Fertility reduction as a way of reducing the poor quality of health in West Africa, but fertility control efforts have not yielded the needed outcomes, as usage of contraceptives in the region is not encouraging. This study used World Health Organizations statistics data for 2017 to established the fact that Maternal and Infant Mortality can be reduced not only by reducing the high Total Fertility Rate but also by increasing the yearly expenditure on health, increasing vaccination coverage, increase the number of skilled birth attendants, while providing other needed health inputs. The paper revealed significant association between total fertility rate and maternal mortality, child mortality and stunting growth of children. The positive association between total fertility and other variables show the high total fertility rate is impacting negatively on the other variables. Hence the need to control fertility rate in West Africa as it will lead to heath systems improvement in the region. KEYWORDS: fertility in West Africa, maternal mortality, infant mortality, sub- Saharan africa How to cite this paper: Ahotovi Thomas Ahoto | Lokmani Giri | Stanley Kofi Alor "Reducing Maternal and Child Mortality in West Africa: Improve Health Indicators for Mother and Child Well-Being" Published in International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456- 6470, Volume-4 | Issue-5, August 2020, pp.1120-1124, URL: www.ijtsrd.com/papers/ijtsrd33033.pdf Copyright © 2020 by author(s) and International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development Journal. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by /4.0) INTRODUCTION Maternal and Child Mortality were major features in the Millennium and the present Sustainable Development Goals(Ma, 2019). As to whether the targets were meet by sub-Saharan Africa countries or will be met according to the targets set by United Nations remained debatable(Sanyang, 2019). Figures from the United Nations World Fertility Booklet of 2015 and World Health Organization’s Health Statistics 2017, show that achieving most of the health related SDGs in sub-Saharan Africa will be as difficult as a search for lion’s blood. Performance of health indicators such as stunting growth among children, availability of skilled birth attendant, maternal and child mortality and expenditure in health in west Africa countries are nothing closer to the target set bythe United Nations Suatanable Development Goals(Nyamuranga & Shin, 2019). For the health systems of the 15 countries in West African to make any positive show in global rakings, the high Total Fertility Rates in the region must record downward growth rather than unacceptable insignificant low decline we claimed to be witnessing (Mccord, Conley, & Sachs, 2017). Whereas higher Fertility Rate may demand for increased in health expenditure, paradoxically, contribution to health delivery from annual budgets of these countries continued to be below the 15% demanded at the Abuja Declaration of 2001 (Nyamuranga & Shin, 2019), while foreign donation to the health sectors keep dwindling (Ashiabi & Nketiah- amponsah, 2015). Though this study side with many studies that pronounced reduction in Total Fertility Rate insub- Sahara Africa as a major solution to the weak health systems(Ahmed & Fielding, 2019), our study suggested that, since the Total Fertility Rates still stand at the average of 4.2 which is more than the projected fertility rate figure for developing countries, increasing allocation to health expenditure, increasing vaccination coverage and training of more skilled birth attendant can rescue the situation of highMaternal and Child Mortality and Stunting Growth Among Children in west Africa. METHODOLOGY The study is a multinational hetrospective study using data from world health organization’s World Health Statistics 2017 publication and United Nations World Fertility Patterns 2015. IJTSRD33033