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Past: Pedagogy Staff, Arba Minch College of Health Scientific discipline, Ethiopia; Yaliso Yaya, PhD Candidate, Centre for International Health, Academy of Bergen, Norway

This mail service is part of our Translating Research into Exercise Series, which features guest posts from authors of the MHTF-PLoS open up-access collections describing the touch of their research since publication.

" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://cdn1.sph.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2413/2015/01/ethiopia-ambulances-300x230.png" data-large-file="https://cdn1.sph.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2413/2015/01/ethiopia-ambulances.png" class="wp-image-24400 size-medium" src="https://cdn1.sph.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2413/2015/01/ethiopia-ambulances-300x230.png" alt="Ethiopia ambulances maternal mortality" width="300" height="230" srcset="https://cdn1.sph.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2413/2015/01/ethiopia-ambulances-300x230.png 300w, https://cdn1.sph.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2413/2015/01/ethiopia-ambulances.png 890w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 85vw, 300px">
Motorcycle ambulances accept been useful for transporting mothers with complications to wellness facilities. The message in Amharic reads "A mother should not dice while giving life." (Photograph: Demissew Mitiku)

Unfortunately, there is still limited data to oversee maternal and newborn bloodshed interventions in low-income countries. Developing countries lack vital registrations that are present in high-income countries. Considering of the shortage of such essential data, translating policy into action and monitoring programmes to reduce maternal and neonatal deaths is difficult.

The new Sustainable Development Goals divide countries into three groups where the maternal mortality ratio (MMR) is greater than 400, between 100 and 400, and less than 100 based on the ratio in 2010. Such a grouping is necessary because dissimilar ratios may determine dissimilar intervention strategies. Unfortunately, for many countries there is a controversy over the level of the MMR. If we employ Federal democratic republic of ethiopia as an example, a United nations gauge of MMR in 2010 is 350 per 100,000 live births, whereas the DHS estimated information technology to exist 676 for the same year.

As a follow-up to our paper, Maternal and Neonatal Mortality in South-Westward Ethiopia: Estimates and Socio-Economic Inequality, we developed, validated, and used community based birth registration in a population of nearly half a million people in 4 woredas, or districts, in rural southern Ethiopia. Nosotros aimed to guess maternal bloodshed rates and to monitor progress in reducing deaths. The virtually important lesson we learnt, that may be applicable in similar settings in Ethiopia and in Africa, is that information technology is possible to obtain high-coverage birth registration and measure maternal mortality in rural communities with trained community health workers.

In southern Ethiopia, the MMR was high and most births and maternal deaths occurred at abode. The MMR was about 500 per 100,000 live births in 2010, and information from 2014 testify that this ratio may have been reduced past well-nigh 60%.

We also registered that when women's admission to comprehensive and basic obstetric services improves, a birth registration system can certificate important societal changes:

  1. Significantly increased institutional delivery rates
  2. Decreased use of traditional birth attendants
  3. More than half of women who deliver attend three or more antenatal care visits

In our experience, it is possible to register most births in rural Ethiopian communities using the wellness extension workers. However, we advise that a birth registry should exist expanded to include registration of pregnancies as well every bit pregnancy outcomes. Such a system could provide the customs health workers with a new tool to actively follow up pregnant women and ensure proper antenatal controls and referrals to institutions. It could also help in monitoring neonatal heath and exist a tool to provide essential services to women in the weeks after nascence.