MHTF

This presentation outlines the vision and strategy of the EHAS foundation and describes wireless technology and implementation of programs in South America. 

The Maternal Health Task Force (MHTF) held an e-forum from June 3 – June 15, 2009 with the aim of providing an opportunity for the maternal health community to offer feedback on the newly revised DHS questionnaire. This document is a summary of the comments and recommendations that arose during the e-forum.

During the Maternal Health Task Force (MHTF) e-forum there was consensus from the maternal healthcommunity that, while it is important to retain a set of key questions in the core questionnaires,developing a dedicated Maternal Health Module as an optional add-on would be very beneficial inefforts to address maternal health needs and would help fill what is seen as a lack of robust data in thefield of maternal health. The MHTF is prepared to work with DHS on the development of this module.

In safe motherhood programming in the developing world, insufficient attention has been given to maternal morbidity, which can extend well beyond childbirth. For every woman who dies of pregnancy-related causes, an estimated 20 women experience acute or chronic morbidity. Maternal morbidity adversely affects families, communities and societies. Maternal morbidity has multiple causes, with duration ranging from acute to chronic, severity ranging from transient to permanent and with a range of diagnosis and treatment options. This article addresses six selected relatively neglected aspects of maternal morbidity to illustrate the range of acute and chronic morbidities that can affect women related to pregnancy and childbearing that are prevalent in developing countries: anaemia, maternal depression, infertility, fistula, uterine rupture and scarring and genital and uterine prolapse. Based on this review, recommendations to reduce maternal morbidity include: expand the focus of safe motherhood to explicitly include morbidity; improve data on incidence and prevalence of maternal morbidity; link mortality and morbidity outcomes and programming; increase access to facility- and community-based maternal health care and reproductive health care; and address the antecedents to poor maternal health through a lifecycle approach.

A comic book in Portuguese about safe motherhood.

This presentation was given by Jeremy Shiffman at EngenderHealth in February 2010 and covers the rise in priority of newborn survival on the global health agenda.

Pattern and differentials of morbidity among under-five children in Bangladesh