1. Measuring progress towards the MDG for maternal health: Including a measure of the health system's capacity to treat obstetric complications
- Author
-
Bailey, P., Paxton, A., Lobis, S., and Fry, D.
- Subjects
- *
MATERNAL mortality , *OBSTETRICAL emergencies , *MEDICAL emergencies , *OBSTETRICS , *LABOR complications (Obstetrics) , *COMPARATIVE studies , *EMERGENCY medical services , *MATERNAL health services , *RESEARCH methodology , *MEDICAL quality control , *MEDICAL cooperation , *PREGNANCY complications , *RESEARCH , *EVALUATION research , *THERAPEUTICS , *STANDARDS ,TREATMENT of pregnancy complications - Abstract
Objective: This paper argues for an additional indicator for measuring progress of the Millennium Development Goal for maternal health-the availability of emergency obstetric care.Methods: MDG monitoring will be based on two indicators: the maternal mortality ratio and the proportion of births attended by skilled personnel. Strengths and weaknesses of a third indicator are discussedResults: The availability of EmOC measures the capacity of the health system to respond to direct obstetric complications. Benefits to using this additional indicator are its usefulness in determining an adequate distribution of services and showing management at all levels what life-saving interventions are not being provided, and stimulate thought as to why. It can reflect programmatic changes over a relatively short period of time and data requirements are not onerous.Conclusion: A measure of strength of the health system is important since many interventions depend on the health system for their implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]- Published
- 2006
- Full Text
- View/download PDF