INTRODUCTION The objective of this study was to present the Swedish Pregnancy Register and to explore regional differences in maternal characteristics, antenatal care, first trimester combined screening and delivery outcomes in Sweden. MATERIAL AND METHODS The Pregnancy Register (www.graviditetsregistret.se) collects data on pregnancy and childbirth, starting at the first visit to antenatal c...

Nepal's Safe Motherhood Programme has failed to deliver expected gains in maternal and child health. Nepalese mothers and their children continue to dispense with (or be denied) antenatal care, experience high maternal mortality rates and suffer chronic malnutrition. We address the correlates and consequences of antenatal care utilization in Nepal by applying two-stage least squares, binomial l...

BACKGROUND Zambia adopted Option A for prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT) in 2010 and announced a move to Option B+ in 2013. We evaluated the uptake, outcomes, and costs of antenatal, well-baby, and PMTCT services under routine care conditions in Zambia after the adoption of Option A. METHODS We enrolled 99 HIV-infected/HIV-exposed (index) mother/baby pairs with a first...

BACKGROUND Pakistan has a high burden of maternal and newborn mortality, which would be largely preventable through appropriate antenatal and delivery care. While the influence of socio-economic status on institutional delivery is well established in the literature, relatively little is known about the relationship between the quality of antenatal care and institutional delivery. METHODS A ho...

BACKGROUND The World Health Organization identifies depressive disorders as the second leading cause of global disease burden by 2020. However, there is a paucity of studies which examined the associated factors of antenatal depression in low-income countries. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of antenatal depression and associated factors among pregnant women in Addis Ababa, Ethiopi...

BACKGROUND In June of 2010, an antenatal ultrasound program to perform basic screening for high-risk pregnancies was introduced at a community health care center in rural Uganda. Whether the addition of ultrasound scanning to antenatal visits at the health center would encourage or discourage potential patients was unknown. Our study sought to evaluate trends in the numbers of antenatal visits ...

BACKGROUND Antenatal ultrasound scan is a widely accepted component of antenatal care. Studies have looked at the relationship between ultrasound scanning and caesarean section (CS) in certain groups of women in China. However, there are limited data on the utilization of antenatal ultrasound scanning in the general population, including its association with CS. The purpose of this study is to ...

OBJECTIVE To analyse factors affecting variations in the observed quality of antenatal and sick-child care in primary-care facilities in seven African countries. METHODS We pooled nationally representative data from service provision assessment surveys of health facilities in Kenya, Malawi, Namibia, Rwanda, Senegal, Uganda and the United Republic of Tanzania (survey year range: 2006-2014). Ba...

The practice and timing of routine antenatal visits for healthy pregnant women, introduced arbitrarily and without evidence of effectiveness, have become entrenched in obstetric practice over the last century. In 2001 the large, cluster randomized WHO Antenatal Care Trial concluded that a goal-orientated package of antenatal care with reduced visits seemed not to affect maternal and perinatal o...

BACKGROUND Continuum of care has the potential to improve maternal, newborn, and child health (MNCH) by ensuring care for mothers and children. Continuum of care in MNCH is widely accepted as comprising sequential time (from pre-pregnancy to motherhood and childhood) and space dimensions (from community-family care to clinical care). However, it is unclear which linkages of care could have a gr...