scholarly journals Measuring maternal mortality: An overview of opportunities and options for developing countries

BMC Medicine ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
WJ Graham ◽  
S Ahmed ◽  
C Stanton ◽  
CL Abou-Zahr ◽  
OMR Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Maternal Mortality

scholarly journals Education in developing countries and reducing maternal mortality: a forgotten piece of the puzzle?

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vedran Stefanovic
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Maternal Mortality ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Perinatal Care ◽  
Substantial Improvement ◽  
Global Strategy ◽  
Perinatal Medicine ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
Women's Role

Abstract Despite substantial improvement in reducing maternal mortality during the recent decades, we constantly face tragic fact that maternal mortality (especially preventable deaths) is still unacceptably too high, particularly in the developing countries, where 99% of all maternal deaths worldwide occur. Poverty, lack of proper statistics, gender inequality, beliefs and corruption-associated poor governmental policies are just few of the reasons why decline in maternal mortality has not been as sharp as it was wished and expected. Education has not yet been fully recognized as the way out of poverty, improvement of women’s role in the society and consequent better perinatal care and consequent lower maternal mortality. Education should be improved on all levels including girls, women and their partners, medical providers, religious and governmental authorities. Teaching the teachers should be also an essential part of global strategy to lower maternal mortality. This paper is mostly a commentary, not a systematic review nor a meta-analysis with the aim to rise attention (again) to the role of different aspects of education in lowering maternal mortality. The International Academy of Perinatal Medicine should play a crucial role in pushing the efforts on this issue as the influential instance that promotes reflection and dialog in perinatal medicine, especially in aspects such as bioethics, the appropriate use of technological advances, and the sociological and humanistic dimensions of this specific problem of huge magnitude. The five concrete steps to achieve these goals are listed and discussed.

scholarly journals Midwives and Maternal Mortality Evidence from a Midwifery Policy Experiment in 19th Century Sweden

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Lorentzon ◽  
Per Pettersson-Lidbom
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Infant Mortality ◽  
Maternal Mortality ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
High Rate ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Effective Strategy ◽  
Policy Experiment ◽  
Exogenous Source

Abstract This paper estimates the causal effect of a historical midwifery policy experiment on maternal mortality, infant mortality, and stillbirth during the period of 1830–1894 in Sweden. Exploiting sharp changes or “discontinuities” across time and place in the availability of trained and licensed midwives as an exogenous source of variation, we find that a doubling of trained midwives led to a 20%–40% reduction in maternal mortality and a 20% increase in the uptake of midwife-assisted homebirths. The results thus suggest that a 1% increase in the share of midwife-assisted homebirths decreased maternal mortality by as much as 2%, which is a remarkable finding given that midwife training was only 6–12 months at that time. The results of this study contribute to the current debate about the most effective strategy to reduce the unacceptably high rate of maternal mortality in many developing countries, especially in low-resource settings.

scholarly journals Universal Maternal Rights: A Matter of Life and Death

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alicia Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Maternal Mortality ◽  
Obstetric Care ◽  
Maternal Deaths ◽  
Scientific Methods ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
The World ◽  
Positive Effect ◽  
Multiple Obstacles ◽  
Maternal Rights

Childbirth has been a part of our lives since the beginning of time. Without the process none of us would be alive today. So why is it that maternal mortality remains one of the greatest inequities in the world? To date, approximately 500, 000 women die annually due to the lack of appropriate prenatal and obstetric care. Difficulties arising with childbirth cannot be predicted. However, the way in which we react to a situation can have a lasting, positive effect on the countries and the women who are at risk. The ways in which to help reduce the large number of maternal deaths in developing countries is not complicated and can be achieved if it is made a priority. In conclusion, there are multiple obstacles in regard to succeeding the highest achievable standard of health globally.  With the education of evolving scientific methods, and the collaboration of humanitarian views, the welfare and health of women and their children, can be internationally restored. With the education of evolving scientific methods, and the collaboration of humanitarian views, the welfare and health of women and their children, can be internationally restored.

scholarly journals Inequality in institutional delivery of the recent birth among married women in Nepal: a trend analysis

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramesh Adhikari ◽  
Aakriti Wagle
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Maternal Mortality ◽  
Rural Women ◽  
Institutional Delivery ◽  
Maternal Mortality Ratio ◽  
Binary Logistic Regression ◽  
Bivariate Analysis ◽  
Demographic And Health Surveys ◽  
Chi Square ◽  
Safe Delivery

Abstract Background The huge discrepancy in health statistics between developed and developing countries occur in the area of maternal mortality, with developing countries contributing most of the figures. Nepal has higher maternal mortality ratio than its South Asian neighbors. This study assesses the trend of institutional delivery of recent birth and compared the inequalities with associated factors that affect institutional delivery in Nepal.Methods The data for this study was obtained from three sequential Nepal Demographic and Health Surveys [NDHS] of 2006, 2011, and 2016. The information was collected from mothers having a child within last five years preceding the survey years. The total number of such mothers was 4066, 4148, and 3998 respectively in the survey of 2006, 2011, and 2016.The association between institutional delivery and the explanatory variables was assessed via bivariate analysis (chi-square test) and multivariate analysis (binary logistic regression).Results The utilization of health service during delivery stepped up from 21% in 2006 to 62% in 2016.Although the proportion of delivery in health facility increased among poorest over the period of 10 years, the disparity between richest and poorest still persisted from 2006 to 2016 and the association was highly significant in all the surveys. Although, government of Nepal has launched the maternity incentive scheme through safe delivery incentive program in 2005, poor women are still deprived from utilizing the service. Poorest and poorer women were 78 percent (aOR=0.22, 95% CI 0.17-0.27) and 71 Percent (aOR=0.23, 95%CI 0.23-0.35) respectively less likely to have institutional delivery than the richest women after controlling the other socio-demographic and culture factors. Furthermore, this study found that education, place of residence, women’s autonomy, religion, number of ANC visits, exposure to newspaper and TV were significant predicators for place of delivery. Conclusion Although there has been three-fold increment in utilization of health services during delivery over the period of 10 years, the discrepancy between rich and poor, educated and uneducated and urban and rural area is highly evident. Overall, our study highlights the necessity of interventions to promote institutional delivery with greater focus on poor, uneducated, and rural women.

scholarly journals Maternal Mortality in 19th- and Early 20th-century Italy

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 860-880 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matteo Manfredini ◽  
Marco Breschi ◽  
Alessio Fornasin ◽  
Stanislao Mazzoni ◽  
Sergio De lasio ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Maternal Mortality ◽  
Systematic Study ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Peculiar Characteristic ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Over Time

Summary Although dramatically reduced in Western and developed countries, maternal mortality is still today one of the most relevant social and health scourges in developing countries. This is the reason why high levels of maternal mortality are always interpreted as a sign of low living standards, ignorance, poverty and woman discrimination. Maternal mortality represents, therefore, a very peculiar characteristic of demographic systems of ancien regime. Despite this important role in demographic systems, no systematic study has been addressed to investigate the impact of maternal mortality in historical Italy. The aim of this article is to shed some light on such a phenomenon by investigating its trend over time and the determinants in some Italian populations between the 18th and the early 20th centuries. The analysis will make use of civil and parish registers linked together by means of nominative techniques, and it will be, therefore, carried out at the micro level.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document