Background The Partnership for Transforming Health Systems Phase 2 (PATHS2) project introduced and supports community based interventions such as safe motherhood initiative demand side (SMID) and an emergency transport scheme within northern Nigeria. This study evaluates the effect of PATHS2’s community based interventions in addressing transportation as a barrier to accessing skilled birth del...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the Safe Motherhood Programme of Midlands Province by means of process indicators, in particular Caesarean Section Rates (CSR), in comparison with the commonly used outcome indicator Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR). DESIGN A cross sectional descriptive study. SETTING Midlands Province, Zimbabwe. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Process indicators of the Safe Motherhood Programme...

Correspondence and reprint requests should be addressed to: Dr. Jennifer Amery Senior Health Adviser, South Asia Region DFID India UK Department for International Development (DFID) B28 Tara Crescent Qutab Institutional Area New Delhi 110 016 India Email: [email protected] Fax: (91) (11) 2652 9296 Generations of our children and grandchildren may rightly look back and wonder how so many women...

The various means of delivering essential obstetric services are described for settings in which the maternal mortality ratio is relatively low. This review yields four basic models of care, which are best described by organizational characteristics relating to where women give birth and who performs deliveries. In Model 1, deliveries are conducted at home by a community member who has received...

In 1987 an international conference brought global attention to an issue that previously had been ignored: the world's alarmingly high number of maternal deaths in childbirth. The conference ended with a declaration calling for a reduction in maternal mortality by at least half by the year 2000. As the deadline approached, safe motherhood activists lamented the fact that the world was nowhere n...

Achieving the ambitious maternal mortality reduction aims of the Millennium Development Goals will require more than generating sufficient donor support and carrying out appropriate medical interventions. It also will necessitate convincing governments in developing countries to give the cause political priority. The generation of political priority, however, is a subject that has received mini...

Each year an estimated 500,000 to 600,000 women die due to complications from childbirth, making this one of the leading causes of death globally for women in their reproductive years. In 1987 a global initiative was launched to address the problem, but few developing countries since then have experienced a documented significant decline in maternal mortality levels. Honduras represents an exce...

As one of the countries that has agreed to participate as a pilot country for the World Bank’s Comprehensive Development Framework (CDF) approach, the Government of Vietnam has designated health as one of the key sectors for CDF emphasis and has set up an overall CDF coordination team including the Ministers of Finance and Planning/Investment, the Secretariat of the Communist Party of Vietnam a...

a Department of Medicine, Tulane University School of Medicine, New Orleans, USA b Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences, Safe Motherhood Program, Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, USA c Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Zambia, University Teaching Hospital, Lusaka, Zambia d Departmen...

With funding from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Reproductive Health (DRH) and the Health Resources and Services Administration’s Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB), the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs (AMCHP) and CityMatCH have formed a Women’s Health Partnership to build state and local capacity to promote safe motherhood and enhance women’s...