‘The main causes of maternal and newborn mortality are well-known and many can be prevented by relatively simple and inexpensive interventions… many of the resulting maternal and newborn deaths are at least partly due to simple oversights and a lack of consistency early on in the treatment process… community midwives and staff in primary care facilities sometimes are too slow to make referrals or fail to recognise problems and carry out basic diagnostic tests…

‘The WHO Safe Childbirth Checklist… aims to help health care workers to improve the quality of care around childbirth and minimise complications and deaths. For Dr Haroon, the benefits are clear. “Most of the time I lack the information that I need” she explains. “Implementing the Checklist will help to identify problems early on and make sure that the right decision is taken at the right time.”…

‘In 2008 the World Health Organization (WHO) started to develop a checklist-based tool to address these difficulties. The resulting Safe Childbirth Checklist (http://www.who.int/patientsafety/implementation/checklists/childbirth/en/) translates a range of known best practices into a simple format that health workers can use in their daily work. The Checklist is still in development, however, the pilot edition contains 29-items that address the main causes of morbidity and mortality around the time of childbirth. Each item on the list prompts the health worker to consider a critical action that, if missed, could lead to complications or death.’

Full text here

Best wishes, Neil

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