BACKGROUND Countries measure trends in HIV incidence to assess the impact of HIV prevention and treatment programmes. Most countries have approximated trends in HIV incidence through modelled estimates or through trends in HIV prevalence among young people (aged 15-24 years) assuming they have recently become sexually active and have thus only been recently exposed to HIV. METHODS Trends in H...

BACKGROUND In the absence of reliable data, antenatal HIV surveillance has been used to monitor the HIV epidemic since the late 1980s. Currently, routine data from Prevention of Mother-to-child HIV transmission (PMTCT) programmes are increasingly available. Evaluating whether the PMTCT programme reports provide comparable HIV prevalence estimates with the antenatal surveillance reports is impor...

OBJECTIVE To assess the effectiveness of the Maternal and Child Health (MCH) handbook in Mongolia to increase antenatal clinic attendance, and to enhance health-seeking behaviors and other health outcomes. METHODS A cluster randomized trial was conducted using the translated MCH handbook in Bulgan, Mongolia to assess its effectiveness in promoting antenatal care attendance. Pregnant women wer...

BACKGROUND Care of pregnant women with concurrent medical conditions can be optimized by multidisciplinary antenatal management. In the current study we describe women with concurrent medical conditions who attended our antenatal anesthesia clinic over a 14-year period, 2002-2015 and, based on the findings, we suggest new policies, strategies and practices to improve antenatal care. METHODS I...

BACKGROUND Depression is a leading source of morbidity and health loss in Australian women. This study investigates the determinants of antenatal depressive symptoms and postnatal depressive symptoms in an Australian population, including people from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds. METHOD The study used a retrospective cohort of mothers of all live births in public h...

This descriptive study was designed to describe the patterns and determinants of maternity care among Syrian women living in Damascus. All 39 birth registers in 2 large provinces were used to recruit 500 mothers of healthy newborns. Mothers were interviewed in their homes using a semistructured questionnaire. Multivariate analysis of the determinants of the frequency of use of antenatal care sh...

Methods: Data was collected from an analysis of antenatal and medical records of women who attended antenatal care and delivered at the regional hospital between January and December 2007. Only pregnant women who attended antenatal care at this regional hospital and delivered in its facilities were selected for the study. Patients eligible for review were identified using the labour ward delive...

INTRODUCTION This paper reviews the literature exploring the experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women accessing antenatal care in Australia, alongside literature comparing standard models of antenatal care against midwifery continuity models of antenatal care. Attention is given to evidence based benefits of midwifery continuity care models, and how these benefits can better a...

Congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH) has a high mortality rate mainly due to lung hypoplasia and persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn (PPHN). Simvastatin has been shown to prevent the development of pulmonary hypertension (PH) in experimental models of PH. We, therefore, hypothesized that antenatal simvastatin would attenuate PPHN in nitrofen-induced CDH in rats. The efficacy of an...