HEALTH CARE NEAR-MISS – Indicators to measure the performance of obstetric teams in resource-poor settings

Indicators of health care near-miss measure the occurrence of omissions, delays and treatment failure. They are different from maternal near-miss indicators which measure the number of women who nearly died in pregnancy and were saved in extremis. This briefing paper presents why and how the FEMHEALTH project developed and tested health care near-miss indicators for measuring the performance of obstetric teams in lowand middle-income countries. It uses findings from FEMHEALTH’s analysis of the potential effect of the removal of users’ fees on the quality of care in Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali and Morocco, to recommend a set of indicators of health care near-miss for use in other evaluations. This