puerperal mortality was higher than in any year . since 1905, and the increase was preponderantly due to sepsis. Last year (1921) the maternal mortality rate fell, but is still far higher than it should be, considering our modern knowledge of the cause and prevention of infection and the successful application of this knowledge to the practice of surgery. In order to arrest this regrettable and...

INTRODUCTION Ethiopia introduced national Maternal Death Surveillance and Response (MDSR) in 2013 and is among the first sub-Saharan African countries to capture data on facility-based and community-based maternal deaths. We interviewed frontline MDSR implementers about their experiences of the first 2 years of MDSR, including perceptions of its introduction and outcomes for health services. ...

Andhra Pradesh, a large state in southern India, has a high maternal mortality ratio of 195 per 100,000 livebirths despite the improvements in social, demographic and health indicators over the last two decades. This contrary situation has been analyzed using findings of different studies on maternal mortality, and four factors have been presented for consistently-high maternal mortality in the...

BACKGROUND Improving maternal health is one of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) aimed at improving maternal healthcare and reducing maternal mortality. The utilization of maternal health services is influenced by several factors that need to be better understood. The objective of this study was to estimate the role of socio-economic position as a determinant of the utilization of m...

Maternal mortality in Kigoma Region, western Tanzania, was assessed as part of ongoing efforts to reduce maternal deaths in the area. A sisterhood survey was carried out using a questionnaire in which respondents were asked about their sisters who died during pregnancy, childbirth or within six weeks after childbirth. Three thousand and twenty nine individuals were interviewed. The overall esti...

Following dramatic reductions between the early 1900s and the early 1980s, the maternal mortality ratio began to rise, reaching a peak of almost 17 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. Although this number pales in comparison with that found in sub-Saharan Africa and India, the troubling rise in the United States is a surrogate for medical care in general and obstetrical care in particular....

OBJECTIVE To provide a model-based method of estimating maternal mortality at the subnational level and illustrate its use in estimating maternal mortality rates (MMrates) and maternal mortality ratios (MMRs) in all 64 districts of Bangladesh. METHODS Knowing that mortality is more pronounced among the poorer segments of a population, in rural areas and in areas with poor availability and uti...

BACKGROUND Maternal mortality is a major health problem in most resource-poor settings, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. In Ghana, maternal mortality remains high and births attended by skilled health professionals are still low despite the introduction, in 2005, of free maternal health care for all women seeking care in public health facilities. OBJECTIVES This study aimed to explore geogra...

As part of the MASCOT/WOTRO multinational team conducting the maternal health literature mapping, four Latin American researchers were particularly interested in analysing information specific to their region. The mapping started with 45,959 papers uploaded from MEDLINE, CINAHL, Embase, LILACAS, PopLINE, PsycINFO and Web of Knowledge. From these, 4175 full texts were reviewed and 2295 papers we...

OBJECTIVE To examine the progress made towards the Safe Motherhood Initiative goals in three areas of the United Republic of Tanzania during the 1990s. METHODS Maternal mortality in the United Republic of Tanzania was monitored by sentinel demographic surveillance of more than 77,000 women of reproductive age, and by prospective monitoring of mortality in the following locations; an urban sit...