BACKGROUND Despite considerable efforts to reduce the maternal mortality ratio, numerous pregnant women continue to die in many developing countries, including Nigeria. We conducted a study to determine the incidence and causes of maternal mortality over an 8-month period in a rural-based secondary health facility located in Jahun, northern Nigeria. METHODS A retrospective observational study...

OBJECTIVE To detect maternal deaths, analyse associated causes and compute absolute and specific maternal mortality ratio among five Italian regions in response to a recent ranking of Italy by the Lancet as having the lowest maternal mortality ratio among 181 countries. DESIGN Record-linkage study. SETTING Five Italian regions. POPULATION All women aged 15-49 years resident in the partici...

abstract background: many maternal deaths caused are due to preventable causes during pregnancy and childbirth. therefore, the detailed analysis of the root causes provides developing a plan and appropriate interventions to prevent these deaths occurring in the health system. this study aims to determine the causes of maternal mortality using root cause analysis (rca) method. materials and meth...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the performance of a continuous quality improvement collaboration at Ridge Regional Hospital, Accra, Ghana, that aimed to halve maternal and neonatal deaths. METHODS In a quasi-experimental, pre- and post-intervention analysis, system deficiencies were analyzed and 97 improvement activities were implemented from January 2007 to December 2011. Data were collected on outco...

BACKGROUND Severe maternal conditions have increasingly been used as alternative measurements of the quality of maternal care and as alternative strategies to reduce maternal mortality. We aimed to study severe maternal morbidity and maternal near miss among women in two tertiary hospitals in Kota Bharu, Kelantan, Malaysia. METHODS A cross-sectional study with record review was conducted in 2...

BACKGROUND Adolescents are often noted to have an increased risk of death during pregnancy or childbirth compared with older women, but the existing evidence is inconsistent and in many cases contradictory. We aimed to quantify the risk of maternal death in adolescents by estimating maternal mortality ratios for women aged 15-19 years by country, region, and worldwide, and to compare these rati...

The National Conference on Safe Motherhood in 1987 established the goal of reducing maternal mortality by 50% by the year 2000. At that time, there were 500,000 deaths from maternal causes, of which all but about 4000 occurred in developing countries. 87% of births globally occurred in developing countries. Maternal mortality was highest in Africa, particularly in Western, Central, and Easte...

BACKGROUND Reducing maternal and perinatal mortality in sub Saharan Africa remains challenging and requires effective and context specific interventions. OBJECTIVE The aims of this paper were to demonstrate the impact of the community mobilisation of the Skilled Care Initiative (SCI) in reducing maternal and perinatal mortality and to describe the concept and implementation in order to guide ...

BACKGROUND The length of time between two successive live births (birth interval), is associated with child survival in the developing world. Short birth intervals (<24 months) contribute to infant and child mortality risks. Contraceptive use contributes to a reduction in short birth intervals, but evidence is lacking in the DRC. We aimed to investigate the proportion of short birth intervals a...

OBJECTIVE Millennium Development Goal 5A, to decrease the maternal mortality ratio by three quarters between from 1990 to 2015, is proving difficult to achieve in many developing countries, including those in Mesoamerica. In this preliminary report from Belize we describe the major steps taken recently to improve maternal outcomes, leading to the achievement of Millennium Development Goal 5A in...