Children with pre- or perinatal brain injury (PL) exhibit marked plasticity for language learning. Previous work has focused mostly on the emergence of earlier-developing skills, such as vocabulary and syntax. Here we ask whether this plasticity for earlier-developing aspects of language extends to more complex, later-developing language functions by examining the narrative production of childr...

OBJECTIVE To document the beliefs and practices of traditional midwifes in regard to pregnancy, delivery and puerperium. METHOD Taking advantage of a training course for 160 local traditional midwives from the Media and Huasteca regions of San Luis Potosí State, Mexico. Two of the teacher-nurses interviewed 25 of them, supported by a member of Náhuatl and Tenek communities. The participant's ...

OBJECTIVES To assess reducing travel time to perinatal care centers, and to examine whether reducing travel time influences the neonatal mortality rate (NMR). METHODS The travel time from a population centroid in each municipality to the nearest perinatal care center was measured using the Geographic Information System at two time points, 2002 and 2006. Areas with and without reductions in tr...

Background Perinatal audits are used to discuss the causes of stillbirth and neonatal deaths. These audit meetings are organized in every hospital and attended by mid wives, gynecologists, nurses, pediatricians, and managers from hospital and maternity care organizations at least twice a year. Every audit group formulates its own local improvements. Unfortunately it appears that not all improve...

one hundred and sixty preterm deliveries were done at our center in (1996-97). classification according to etiology shows that 30% of these deliveries were due to prom, and 13.75% had to be induced secondary to underling fetal or maternal indication, in 35.6% there were maternal or fetal pathology, and in 20.6% there were no recognized reason (idiopathic). the various etiologic factors were eva...

BACKGROUND Reviews of perinatal deaths are mostly facility based. Given the number of women who, globally, deliver outside of facilities, this data may be biased against total population data. We aimed to analyse population based perinatal mortality data from a LMIC setting (Mpumalanga, South Africa) to determine the causes of perinatal death and the rate of maternal complications in the settin...

Perinatal deaths occurring within the City of Harare, Zimbabwe, during 1983 were studied. Data were collected from all known deliveries within the city. This included exact numbers from three central maternity hospitals, and from referring midwife-run maternity clinics. An estimate was made of the number of births and perinatal deaths occurring within the city, but outside these official matern...

BACKGROUND Intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) is the single largest contributing factor to perinatal mortality in non-anomalous fetuses. Advances in antenatal and neonatal critical care have resulted in a reduction in neonatal deaths over the past decades, while stillbirth rates have remained unchanged. Antenatal detection rates of fetal growth failure are low, and these pregnancies carry a...

PROBLEM Suboptimal care contributes to perinatal mortality rates. Quality-of-care audits can be used to identify and change suboptimal care, but it is not known if such audits have reduced perinatal mortality in South Africa. APPROACH We investigated perinatal mortality trends in health facilities that had completed at least five years of quality-of-care audits. In a subset of facilities that...