Contributor Posts

In Mexico, maternal mortality continues to be a public health problem. Throughout the country, the burden of maternal mortality varies greatly between different locations. The three states with the highest maternal mortality ratio are Guerrero, Oaxaca,…

Scaling up women’s use of skilled maternity care is an important component of global strategies to improve maternal and newborn health, but the availability and provision of skilled care does not necessarily lead to increased utilisation of services.…

Since the 1994 International Conference on Population Development in Cairo, the importance of male involvement in reproductive health programs, including maternal health, has come into focus. In their roles as fathers, partners or healthcare workers, men…

Over the last several years, research on male involvement in reproductive and maternal health care has shown incredible impacts on the health outcomes of women and newborns. In response to this overwhelming research, Uganda officially launched a male…

I spent many of my teenage years living in Malawi, enjoying swimming in beautiful Lake Malawi. Wind on to age 30, and I was struggling to get pregnant. Eventually, following illness, I was diagnosed with schistosomiasis and told that I had probably been…

As we left the facility, my colleague and I shared a glance and giggled. I couldn’t help but express my mind. “You know if this was to be [the] only facility within my jurisdiction, [even though] the health workers are very friendly, I might still…

The burden of ensuring safe delivery does not fall solely on the shoulders of women and girls, but falls on all of us. Whether we are policymakers, service providers, development workers, husbands, fathers or mothers-in-law, we can all make a difference.…

The Midwives Service Scheme (MSS) was set up as a game changer to reduce maternal and child mortality so Nigeria could achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on maternal and child health (MCH). Since the publication of our PLoS Medicine paper,…

The paper—When Women Deliver with No One Present in Nigeria: Who, what, where and so what, published in MHTF-PLOS Year Two collection—revealed that over one in five births in Nigeria was delivered with no one present (NOP) and 94% of those deliveries…

Jane Hirst, Nuffield Medical Fellow, University of Oxford, INTERGROWTH-21st Consortium Preterm birth, or birth before 37 completed weeks of pregnancy, is now the greatest single cause of mortality in children less than 5 years old and is associated with…