Essential interventions for maternal, newborn and child health: background and methodology

Worldwide, 250,000-280,000 women die during pregnancy and childbirth every year and an estimated 6.55 million children die under the age of five. The majority of maternal deaths occur during or immediately after childbirth, while 43% of child death occurs during the first 28 days of life. However, the progress in limiting these has been slow and sporadic. In this supplement of five papers, we aim to systematically assess and summarize essential interventions for reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health from relevant systematic reviews. This paper is an introductory paper detailing the background and methodology used for grading interventions. The following three papers summarize the evidence on essential interventions for pre-pregnancy, pregnancy, childbirth, postnatal (mother and neonatal) and child heath while the last paper describes the essential interventions as per the level of health care delivery and their proposed packages of care.