Chapters authored
Improving Maternal Health: The Safe Childbirth Checklist as a Tool for Reducing Maternal Mortality and Morbidity
Ensuring healthy lives and promoting the well-being for all at all ages is essential to sustainable development. The UN’s adoption of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) in September 2015 reaffirmed the reduction of maternal and newborn mortality as global priorities in the coming decade. The World Health Organisation Safe Childbirth Checklist has been developed to ensure the delivery of essential maternal and perinatal care practices. The Safe Childbirth Checklist aims to help frontline health workers to prevent avoidable childbirth-related mortality and morbidity. The Checklist addresses the major causes of maternal death (haemorrhage, infection, obstructed labour and hypertensive disorders), intrapartum-related stillbirths (inadequate intrapartum care), and neonatal deaths (birth asphyxia, infection and complications related to prematurity). Successful completion of checklist items by healthcare workers will help keep the woman and baby safe as the checklist catalogues a core set of practices that are proven to reduce maternal and newborn harm. The practices described in the checklist items should be conducted at every birth. This chapter utilises experiences gained in Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria and Zambia during the Pfizer Independent Grant for Learning and Change supported Medical Women’s Association of Nigeria Improving Maternal Health in sub-Saharan Africa project to describe the checklist and how it can be used to deliver lifesaving midwifery care and enhance maternal health.
Part of the book: Selected Topics in Midwifery Care
Preventing Maternal Mortality during Childbirth: The Scourge of Delivery with Unskilled Birth Attendants
The death of a woman during childbirth is devastating. The Sustainable Development Goals aim to reduce the global maternal mortality ratio to less than 70 per 100,000 births. No country is expected to have a maternal mortality ratio of more than twice the global average. In settings with weak health systems and suboptimal service delivery, more and more women continue to utilize traditional birth attendants during childbirth. Traditional birth attendants are unskilled and unable to prevent or treat the complications during pregnancy or childbirth that leads to maternal deaths. Every effort must be made to prevent maternal mortality. This chapter utilizes qualitative research methodology and discusses the challenges of preventing maternal deaths in a setting where women routinely utilize traditional birth attendants. The reasons for the persistence of the traditional birth attendants are examined. A solution out of the predicament is fundamental.
Part of the book: Childbirth