BACKGROUND Immigrant women may be regarded as a vulnerable population with respect to access and navigation of maternity care services. They may encounter difficulties when accessing culturally safe and appropriate maternity care, which may be further exacerbated by language difficulties and discriminatory practices or attitudes. The project aimed to understand ethnocultural food and health pra...

Persistent global disparities in maternal and neonatal outcomes and the emergence of compact ultrasound technology as an increasingly viable technology for low-resource settings provided the genesis of the First Look Ultrasound study. Initiated in 2014 in 5 low- and middle-income countries and completed in June 2016, the study's intervention included the training of health personnel to perform ...

OBJECTIVE To compare perinatal mortality, stratified for risk level, in home births attended by a relative or traditional birth attendant without formal training with births attended by trained personnel in a dispensary or hospital. STUDY DESIGN A prospective community based study in five villages in Northwestern Tanzania during 1990, involving 222 women delivering at home and 199 in a dispen...

INTRODUCTION The aim of this study was to investigate the knowledge of toxoplasmosis among professionals and pregnant women in the public health services in Paraná, Brazil. METHODS A cross-sectional observational and transversal study of 80 health professionals (44 nurses and 36 physicians) and 330 pregnant women [111 immunoglobulin M (IgM)- and IgG-non-reactive and 219 IgG-reactive] was cond...

BACKGROUND Nigeria is home to more people living with HIV than any other country in the world, except South Africa and India - where an estimated 2.9 million [1.7 million - 4.2 million] people were living with the virus in 2005. Women bear the greatest burden of frequent high-risk pregnancies, raising large families, and increasingly, the AIDS epidemic. Thus, there is a need for better understa...

OBJECTIVE To compare the risk of fetal death (FD) between 34 and 41 weeks' gestational age (GA) with the neonatal mortality rate to examine the best GA for delivery. STUDY DESIGN Linked birth and infant death data for the US from the National Center for Health Statistics analyzed nonanomalous singleton pregnancies between 2003 and 2005. Pregnancies were classified as high risk or low risk bas...

As part of an investigation into the practical problems of a maternal serum alphafetoprotein (AFP) neural tube defect (NTD) screening programme carried out in Mid Glamorgan, South Wales, between 1977 and 1979, obstetricians were recommended to refer women with high risk pregnancies directly for counselling, high resolution ultrasonography, and amniocentesis without first carrying out serum scre...

OBJECTIVES To determine, in women transferred antenatally for acute admission with high risk pregnancies, the numbers who deliver, the average time from transfer to delivery, and whether the reason for transfer influences the time-to-delivery. METHODS A retrospective analysis of time-to-delivery was performed in a population of women transferred to the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital, QLD...

The identification of high-risk pregnancies that would benefit from the use of electronic fetal monitoring during labour remains an important research issue. In this issue of The Lancet, Lawrence Impey and colleagues report the results of a randomised controlled trial that assessed the efficacy of admission cardiotocography for 8580 low-risk women in labour as measured by reductions in the rate...

OBJECTIVE To determine for the Bizana district, Transkei, the proportion of deliveries that occur at home, home delivery practices, the proportion of women with high-risk pregnancies delivered at home, attendance for antenatal care at the health services and at traditional healers, and the reasons why mothers choose to deliver at home or in the health services. DESIGN Questionnaire survey. ...