Despite impressive global investment in reproductive health programs in West Africa, maternal mortality remains unacceptably high and obstetric care is often inadequate. Fertility is among the highest in the world, while contraceptive prevalence remains among the lowest. This paper explores the social and technical dimensions of this situation. We argue that effective reproductive health progra...

OBJECTIVES As part of a community-based reproductive health project in rural Tanzania, a maternal and perinatal health care surveillance system was established to monitor pregnancy outcomes. This report presents preliminary results. METHODS Village health workers were trained to collect data during health education visits to pregnant and postpartum women. Maternal and fetal or infant survival...

One way of addressing ethical issues in reproductive health is to look at the consequences of current laws, policies and practices and see whether the existing situation gives rise to a preponderance of good or bad consequences. If the bad consequences outweigh the good ones, there is an ethical obligation to seek to change the laws, policies or practices. The data on maternal mortality and mor...

Poverty is often identified as a major barrier to human development. It is also a powerful brake on accelerated progress toward the Millennium Development Goals. Poverty is also a major cause of maternal mortality, as it prevents many women from getting proper and adequate medical attention due to their inability to afford good antenatal care. This Paper thus examines poverty as a threat to hum...

The paper analyzes 141 villages in Matlab, Bangladesh from 1974 to 1996, in which half the villages received from 1977 to 1996 a door-to-door outreach family planning and maternalchild health program. Village and individual data confirm a decline in fertility of about 15 percent in the program villages compared with the control villages by 1982 , as others have noted, which persists until 1996....

OBJECTIVE To determine causes of death and associated risk factors in women of reproductive age in rural South Africa. METHODS Deaths and person-years of observation (pyo) were determined for females (aged 15-49 years) resident in 15,526 households in a rural South African Demographic and Health Surveillance site from 2000 to 2009. Cause of death was ascertained by verbal autopsy and ICD-10 c...

Working papers of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research receive only limited review. Views or opinions expressed in working papers are attributable to the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Institute.

Extrinsic mortality is a key influence on organisms’ life history strategies, especially on age at maturity. This historical longitudinal study of 125 women in rural Domenica examines effects of extrinsic mortality on human age at maturity and pace of reproduction. Extrinsic mortality is indicated by local population infant mortality rates during infancy and at maturity between the years 1925 a...

laboratory bioassays were carried out to evaluate the insecticidal efficacy of silicosec? against 7 - 14 day old adults, old and young larvae of tribolium castaneum (herbst) with the mean ? se (n = 30) weight of 3.4 ? 0.1 and 0.6 ? 0.1 mg, respectively at 27?c and 55 ? 5% rh. wheat treated with four dose rates of silicosec? and untreated wheat served as a control with three replications. adult?...

Experiments were conducted in Mississippi from 2013 to 2015 to determine the systemic and residual efficacy of chlorantraniliprole and flubendiamide against corn earworm, Helicoverpa zea (Boddie), in soybean. Both insecticides were applied at V4 and R3. Ten leaves that were present at the time of application and 10 newly emerged leaves that were not present at the time of application were colle...