Maternal Mortality

The evaluation of reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health (RMNCH) by the Disease Control Priorities, Third Edition (DCP3) focuses on maternal conditions, childhood illness, and malnutrition. Specifically, the chapters address acute illness and undernutrition in children, principally under age 5. It also covers maternal mortality, morbidity, stillbirth, and influences to pregnancy and pre-pregnancy. Volume 3 focuses on developments since the publication of DCP2 and will also include the transition to older childhood, in particular, the overlap and commonality with the child development volume. The DCP3 evaluation of these conditions produced three key findings: 1. There is significant difficulty in measuring the burden of key conditions such as unintended pregnancy, unsafe abortion, nonsexually transmitted infections, infertility, and violence against women. 2. Investments in the continuum of care can have significant returns for improved and equitable access, health, poverty, and health systems. 3. There is a large difference in how RMNCH conditions affect different income groups; investments in RMNCH can lessen the disparity in terms of both health and financial risk.

In 1997 the committee published Reproductive Health in Developing Countries: Expanding Dimensions, Building Solutions, a report that recommended actions to improve reproductive health for women around the world. As a follow- on activity, the committee proposed an investigation into the social and economic consequences of maternal morbidity and mortality. With funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the U.S. Agency for International Development, the committee organized a workshop on this topic in Washington, DC, on October 19-20, 1998. The Consequences of Maternal Morbidity and Maternal Mortality assesses the scientific knowledge about the consequences of maternal morbidity and mortality and discusses key findings from recent research. Although the existing research on this topic is scarce, the report drew on similar literature on the consequences of adult disease and death, especially the growing literature on the socioeconomic consequences of AIDS, to look at potential consequences from maternal disability and death.

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. Documenting Death is a gripping ethnographic account of the deaths of pregnant women in a hospital in a low-resource setting in Tanzania. Through an exploration of everyday ethics and care practices on a local maternity ward, anthropologist Adrienne E. Strong untangles the reasons Tanzania has achieved so little sustainable success in reducing maternal mortality rates, despite global development support. Growing administrative pressures to document good care serve to preclude good care in practice while placing frontline healthcare workers in moral and ethical peril. Maternal health emergencies expose the precarity of hospital social relations and accountability systems, which, together, continue to lead to the deaths of pregnant women.

These four papers supplement the book Contraception and Reproduction: Health Consequences for Women and Children in the Developing World by bringing together data and analyses that would otherwise be difficult to obtain in a single source. The topics addressed are an analysis of the relationship between maternal mortality and changing reproductive patterns; the risks and benefits of contraception; the effects of changing reproductive patterns on infant health; and the psychosocial consequences to women of controlled fertility and contraceptive use.

This is an international study of maternal care and maternal mortality. Since about 1800, different countries have developed quite different systems of maternal care, and this book provides an analysis, grounded in statistics, of the evolution and the effectiveness of those systems in various countries.

Each year more than 4 million children are born with birth defects. This book highlights the unprecedented opportunity to improve the lives of children and families in developing countries by preventing some birth defects and reducing the consequences of others. A number of developing countries with more comprehensive health care systems are making significant progress in the prevention and care of birth defects. In many other developing countries, however, policymakers have limited knowledge of the negative impact of birth defects and are largely unaware of the affordable and effective interventions available to reduce the impact of certain conditions. Reducing Birth Defects: Meeting the Challenge in the Developing World includes descriptions of successful programs and presents a plan of action to address critical gaps in the understanding, prevention, and treatment of birth defects in developing countries. This study also recommends capacity building, priority research, and institutional and global efforts to reduce the incidence and impact of birth defects in developing countries.

Pregnancy is a life-threatening event in many parts of the developing world. Globally, it is estimated that 289,000 women died from being pregnant in 2013. The lifetime risk for dying as a result of pregnancy is as high as 1 in 6 for women living in the poorest nations of the world. Ninety-nine percent of all maternal deaths occur in resource-poor nations, averaging 800 deaths each day or 33 per hour. Improvement in maternal mortality was addressed by the United Nations in 1990 by the Millennium Development Goals (MDG's) in which the 5th goal was global reduction of this statistic by three-quarters by the year 2015. However, this goal will not be achieved. For every mother that dies from pregnancy in resource-poor countries, 15 to 30 additional women develop serious damage. This textbook addresses the continuing problem of maternal deaths in developing nations from three perspectives: medical, anthropological, and epidemiological. The twenty-eight internationally-respected authors in this textbook have had direct field experience with maternal health and pregnancy complications in resource-poor regions. They provide up-to-date analysis of maternal deaths in the regions of the world most affected by this public health problem. These locations include Asia, South America, andmost severely affectedAfrica.

This book examines the impact of maternal mortality on Milton's life and work, and provides important readings of his major poems.