Every day, nearly 800 women die from complications in pregnancy or childbirth, and 99 percent of these deaths occur in developing countries.These deaths could be prevent with interventions and training to treat complications such as hemorrhage, infection, and obstructed labor.

The following video explores the challenges and opportunities to address these issues in Zambia, a country with high maternal mortality. The Saving Mothers Giving Life initiative aims to reduce maternal mortality by 50 percent in selected districts of Zambia and Uganda.

Please click here to access the video

This study aims to determine the incidence of heart failure during pregnancy and incriminated cardiac lesions, as well as maternal and fetal outcomes.

A total of 4523 patients delivered babies over the 7-year period, ten of which had cardiac decompensation.

All patients were not registered at LTH for antenatal care (unbooked), with 70% of them aged 18–24 years. Fifty percent were primigravidae and the majority of them presented with symptoms in the second and third trimester.The data suggests that heart failure during pregnancy is uncommon in Southwest Nigeria.

Image (c) Mount Sinai Hospital

[Available online at: Dovepress]

MASCOT poster presented by School of Public Health (SPH) at the 4th Global Summit of the Association of Schools of Public Health in Africa (ASPHA) hosted in Ghana.

ASPHA MASCOT poster – FINAL

The 2013 Human Development Report was recently published and it aims to examined the profound shift in global dynamics that is being driven by the fast-rising powers of the developing world – and the important implications of this phenomenon for human development.

[Available online at: HDR 2013]

“Health Equity Monitor of WHO Global Health Observatory has gone live.
Monitor currently includes about 30 reproductive, maternal, neonatal and child health indicators in 91 countries – 90 of which are LMICs, disaggregated by child’s sex, place of residence (rural vs. urban), wealth quintile, and education level.
Apart from the database, it has two other core components: country profiles and interactive visualizations – showing inequalities in select health outcomes and services.

Disaggregated data are useful to track progress on health goals, revealing differences between sub-groups that overall averages may mask. Health equity data provide an evidence base for equity-oriented interventions, and are a key component of the movement toward equitable universal health coverage.

The Health Equity Monitor currently includes reproductive, maternal, neonatal and child health indicators, disaggregated by child’s sex, place of residence (rural vs. urban), wealth quintile, and education level.

Data are based on Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS) conducted in 91 countries, 90 of which are low- or middle-income countries.

Core components of the Health Equity Monitor include the database, country profiles and interactive visualizations:

• The database presents data for about 30 reproductive, maternal and child health indicators,
  collected from nearly 200 surveys in 1993-2011. For around half of the countries, data are available for at least two time points.
• Country profiles highlight disaggregated data for each of the 91 study countries, using the most recent available data.

Interactive visualizations show inequalities in select health outcomes and services (situation and trends).”

Image (C) WHO

[Available online at:http://bit.ly/YJSKnE]

Multilateral Cooperation between África, Latin America and Europe to detect successful polices for tackling maternal and child health inequalities.

This paper was wrote by the MASCOT group and presents the methodological guidelines to conduct the fieldwork and some preliminary results that will help towards discussing the achievement of the MDGs and for debating on how inequalities can be addressed in the post-2015 agenda.

Africa LAT and EU tackling inequalites MASCOT

[Available online at UNICEF]

Experts in the field of maternal and child health meet this week in Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), hosted by NIMR (National Institute for Medical Research) in the frame of the FP7 project MASCOT – Multilateral Association for Studying Health Inequalities and Enhancing North-South and South-South Cooperation (http://www.mascotfp7.eu).

The event started on Monday (11th March) with a two days’ workshop that aims to engage researchers and policy makers in a dialogue on the existing gaps between maternal and child health (MCH) research evidence and final policy discussion/outcomes, to identify best practices on how research evidence can be taken up by policy makers with the aim of improving MCH and reducing health inequalities. This workshop will be attended by researchers and academics from South Africa, Ghana, Tunisia, Tanzania, Chile, Mexico, Costa Rica and Europe, besides high level policy-makers and researchers from Tanzania.

On Wednesday the steering committee will then discuss the progress done in the different work packages of the project, addressing key issues on maternal and child health.

MASCOT project is funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP7). SPI is the partner responsible for dissemination and knowledge transfer and will organize a series of international events in the 3 regions of the project (Africa, Latina America and Europe) to promote effective knowledge transfer and exchange of good practices and relevant initiatives among stakeholders of different countries.

For further information please visit the project website http://www.mascotfp7.eu/ or the Facebook page

The World Bank had developed a toolkit to tackle the malnutrition that leads to irreversible negative impacts and generates high human, social, and economic costs that contribute to perpetuating poverty. Latin America and the Caribbean are the most vulnerable regions in the world to major crises and emergencies.

“This toolkit is designed to guide countries in crafting policy responses to nutritional needs of mothers and young children in unstable context. It also provides direction on how to protect and promote the nutrition of mothers and children during stable times, emergencies and during the transition in and out of crisis.”

This toolkit comprises three main components such as policy guidance for priority nutrition interventions and cross-cutting approaches, country benchmarking and case studies.

Image (C) CARP

[Available online at: http://bit.ly/XKu1iN]

You can now send your application for innovative prevention and treatment approaches to dramatically reduce maternal and newborn deaths and stillbirths in poor, hard-to-reach communities around the time of childbirth under the Saving Lives at Birth Round III.

Please go to www.savinglivesatbirth.net for more information and download the Request For Applications. Deadline is March 28, 2013, at 14:00 EST.

[Source: Saving Lives at Birth]

The risk of maternal death is much higher for a woman living in a developing country  than it is for a woman living in a developed country. Maternal mortality continues to be a health indicator that demonstrates the wide gap between the rich and poor within a country.

Regarding this aspect, we propose an interesting reading from Evelina Chapman et al on “Cochrane systematic reviews are useful to map research gaps for decreasing maternal mortality”.

This article describes “the general mapping, prioritizing, reconciling, and updating approach: (1) identifying gaps in the maternal health research using published systematic reviews and formulating research questions, (2) prioritizing questions using Delphi method, (3) reconciling identified research priorities with the existing literature (i.e., searching of ongoing trials in trials registries), (4) updating the process. (…) We evaluated the “Implications for Research” section to identify gaps in the research.”

Image (C) FLICKR

[Article adapted from original Journal of Clinical Epidemiology]