OBJECTIVE To apply the World Health Organization (WHO) Application of the International Classification of Diseases, tenth revision (ICD-10) to deaths during the perinatal period: ICD-Perinatal Mortality (ICD-PM) to existing perinatal death databases. DESIGN Retrospective application of ICD-PM. SETTING South Africa, UK. POPULATION Perinatal death databases. METHODS Deaths were grouped ac...

Background Complications from pregnancy and childbirth are the leading cause of mortality and morbidity for women of reproductive age in developing countries. Ethiopia has one of the highest maternal mortality ratios (MMR) in the world at 497 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births (Kassebaum et al. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(14)60696-6). Maternal deaths can largely be prevented if de...

OBJECTIVES Only 40.7% women in India deliver in an institution; leaving many vulnerable to maternal morbidity and mortality (India has 22% of global maternal deaths). While limited accessibility to functioning institutions may account in part, a common reason why women deliver at home is poverty. A lack of readily available financial resources for families to draw upon at the time of labor to t...

We thankMarge Koblinksy for her considered editorial on the Maternal Death Surveillance and Response (MDSR) approach used in Kenya and lessons learned, described in our recent article published in GHSP. Her views on the potential effectiveness of MDSR in resource-limited settings, however, seem pessimistic. Firstly, Koblinsky argues that MDSR is too complicated and demanding in lowand middle-in...

BACKGROUND Accurate measurement of maternal mortality is needed to develop a greater understanding of the scale of the problem, to increase effectiveness of program planning and targeting, and to track progress. In the absence of good quality vital statistics, interim methods are used to measure maternal mortality. The purpose of this study is to document experience with three community-based i...

Maternal death surveillance and response (MDSR) constitutes a quality improvement approach to identify how many maternal deaths occur, what the underlying causes of death and associated factors are, and how to implement actions to reduce the number of preventable stillbirths and maternal and neonatal deaths. This requires a coordinated approach, ensuring both national- and district-level stakeh...

T he population growth of the planet is almost entirely in the developing world and is accompanied by an unacceptably high number of maternal deaths. The World Health Organization Millennium Development Goal 5 to reduce maternal mortality by 75% between 1990 and 2015 provides a clear target; however, an effective strategy to deal with the ongoing epidemic of preventable maternal mortality, incl...

BACKGROUND The paper's primary purpose is to determine changes in magnitude and causes of institutional maternal mortality in Mozambique. We also describe shifts in the location of institutional deaths and changes in availability of prevention and treatment measures for malaria and HIV infection. METHODS Two national cross-sectional assessments of health facilities with childbirth services we...

OBJECTIVES To use PERISTAT data on indicators of maternal mortality and morbidity to explore maternal health outcomes in Europe, and to discuss the implications of variations in the data sources for these indicators. STUDY DESIGN The PERISTAT feasibility study provides the source for this descriptive study, covering 15 European countries. Maternal mortality ratios are calculated, and data to ...

Issues surrounding maternal mortality have recently been widely published in both the lay media and the health fraternity literature. Possible reasons for this are that there are only five years remaining until the 2015 deadline to have achieved the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The general impression among health professionals is that there has been slow progress in achie...