Target 3.1: Reduce maternal mortality
By 2030, reduce the global maternal mortality ratio to less than 70 per 100,000 live births
Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
Why shareholder democracy is helpful
About 260,000 women died in pregnancy and childbirth in 2023, 87 percent of them in sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia. WHO states most deaths are preventable with known clinical care. The gap is skilled birth attendance and health-system access, which are governmental. Corporate conduct touches the target through pharmaceutical pricing and patent strategies that limit access to essential medicines. Investors raised this issue in 2024 proposals at AbbVie, Eli Lilly, Gilead, Johnson and Johnson, Merck and Pfizer. The proposals asked for a process to consider how extended patent exclusivities affect access. That is a marginal contribution to maternal survival, not the critical path, so owners help at the margin.
How this was scoredHelpful
Helpful. Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Coordinated a 2024 slate of member proposals at large pharmaceutical companies arguing that strategies to keep drug prices high, including extended patent exclusivities, are human rights risks.
Led the 2024 filings at Pfizer and Eli Lilly asking for a board process to weigh how extended patent exclusivities affect product access.
Filed a 2024 proposal at Pfizer asking for a human rights impact assessment covering access and affordability of its medicines.
Filed 2024 proposals at Bristol Myers Squibb and Eli Lilly asking each to adopt a comprehensive human rights policy addressing the right to health across operations and suppliers.
1 campaign on record
Adopt a comprehensive human rights policy that addresses the right to health across the company's operations and suppliers.
Result: not stated in source
We found no documented change.
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is UN Sustainable Development Goals's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.