In May 1935, the National Council for Women held a conference on health in Sheffield. At the time, concern about rising rates of maternal mortality was at its height nationally. Many of the delegates to the conference commented on the particularly poor situation in Sheffield, which had one of the highest maternal mortality rates (MMR) in the country.' Councillor Asbury, the long-standing Labour...

The Dublin Declaration on Maternal Healthcare-issued by self-declared pro-life activists in Ireland in 2012-states unequivocally that abortion is never medically necessary, even to save the life of a pregnant woman. This article examines the influence of the Dublin Declaration on abortion politics in Latin America, especially El Salvador and Chile, where it has recently been used in pro-life or...

Nepal reportedly reduced the maternal mortality ratio by 48% within one decade between 1996-2005 and received the Millennium development goal award for this. However, there is debate regarding the accuracy of this figure. On the basis of framework of determinants of maternal mortality proposed by McCarthy and Maine in 1992 and successive data from Nepal demographic health survey of 1996, 2001 a...

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...