Revitalizing the Partograph: Day 1

This week EngenderHealth’s Fistula Care Project is hosting a two-day technical meeting to review the current evidence base for partograph effectiveness, develop feasible strategies for overcoming barriers to partograph use, consider alternative intrapartum monitoring strategies, and determine implementation research needs.

The meeting objectives include:

1. Review the current evidence base for partograph effectiveness
2. Identify barriers to partograph use
3. Develop feasible strategies to overcome barriers to partograph use and consider alternative intra-partum monitoring strategies
4. Determine future research needs and/or develop action plan

The morning began with a review of the evidence for partograph use with presentations from Tina Lavender, Celia Pett and Matthews Mathai. In general, the evidence base for partograph use is small and weak, but nearly 90% of the meeting participants believe it is an essential tool for monitoring labor.

In the afternoon, we discussed different partographs and potential alternatives to the partograph. Louise Tina Day presented the pictorial community partograph developed in Bangladesh, Shoval Dekel discussed the e-partogram being developed at Jhpiego, and Matthews Mathai and Priya Agarwal presented on the Safe Childbirth Checklist.

Day 2 of the meeting is underway so stay tuned for more!