BACKGROUND According to an old Swiss proverb, "a new mother lazing in childbed is a blessing to her family". Today mothers rarely enjoy restful days after birth, but enter directly into the challenge of combining baby- and self-care. They often face a combination of infant crying and personal tiredness. Yet, routine postnatal care often lacks effective strategies to alleviate these challenges w...

The maternal care performance of public health midwives' (PHM) was reviewed using 4 methods in a province of Sri Lanka. The objectives of this descriptive study were to provide a comprehensive assessment of their work and to determine the use of a multi-method system to assess their performance in terms of self- assessed competency, knowledge, attitudes and performance of domiciliary and field ...

INTRODUCTION Ethiopia records high levels of inequity in skilled birth care (SBC), where the gaps are much wider among urban migrant women. An intervention project has been conducted in Addis Ababa, intending to improve quality and to ensure equitable access to maternal and newborn care services. As part of the project, this study explored the inequities in maternal health care among migrant wo...

BACKGROUND Reduced length of hospital stay following childbirth has placed increasing demands on community-based post-birth care services in Australia. Queensland is one of several states in Australia in which nurses are employed privately by pharmacies to provide maternal and child health care, yet little is known about their prevalence, attributes or role. The aims of this paper are to (1) ex...

The perinatal development of the nervous system is influenced by different external and internal stimuli. Previous data show that maternal care and perinatal inflammation can induce long-term changes in anxiety- and depression-related behavior. Our hypothesis is that both maternal care and perinatal inflammation act through interacting biological pathways to program adult behavior. To evaluate ...

Background Despite postnatal care services significant role in improving maternal and new-born health, services are underutilized in most developing countries including Ethiopia. Hence, it is important to identify factors that facilitate or impede postnatal care services utilization. The aim of this study was to assess postnatal care services utilization and associated factors among reproductiv...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the reliability of direct observation for measuring intrapartum care and compare this method with clinical audits using objective criteria based on patients' medical charts. DESIGN Cross-sectional study, data collected by two independent evaluators. SETTING Hospital in Dakar, Senegal. PARTICIPANTS Thirty consecutive intrapartum care episodes provided by midwives and ...

BACKGROUND Studies on prenatal care in China have focused on the timing and frequency of prenatal care and relatively little information can be found on how maternal care has been organized and funded or on the actual content of the visits, especially in the less developed rural areas. This study explored maternal care in a rural county from Anhui province in terms of care organization, provisi...

We sought to provide evidence-based recommendations to physicians on how to best deliver a prenatal diagnosis of DS to expectant parents. Our study design consisted of searching Medline and PsychInfo from 1960 to 2008, as well as Web sites from academic organizations and other nonprofit or private organizations, using the terms "Down syndrome," "Trisomy 21," "mongolism," "prenatal diagnosis," "...

INTRODUCTION Since 2011, the Vietnam's Ministry of Health implemented the ethnic minority midwives (EMMs) scheme in order to increase the utilization of maternal health services by women from ethnic minorities and those living in hard-to-reach mountainous areas. This paper analyzes the utilization of antenatal, delivery, and postpartum care provided by EMMs and reports the key determinants of u...