Safe childbirth
Of the more than 130 million births occurring each year, an estimated 303 000 result in the mother’s death, 2.6 million in stillbirth, and another 2.7 million in a newborn death within the first 28 days of birth. The majority of these deaths occur in low-resource settings and most could be prevented.
In response to this unacceptable situation, the WHO Safe Childbirth Checklist has been developed to support the delivery of essential maternal and perinatal care practices. The Checklist addresses the major causes of maternal death (haemorrhage, infection, obstructed labour and hypertensive disorders), intrapartum-related stillbirths (inadequate intrapartum care), and neonatal deaths (birth asphyxia, infection and complications related to prematurity). It was developed following a rigorous methodology and tested for usability in ten countries across Africa and Asia.
An implementation guide for health facilities has been developed to help birth attendants and health-care leaders successfully launch and sustain use of the WHO Safe Childbirth Checklist.
Publications
Before birth: WHO safe childbirth checklist
This document is available in Portuguese and Brazilian PortugueseThe Brazilian Portuguese version published by the Área Técnica da Saúde...
The WHO Safe Childbirth Checklist Collaboration
WHO Safe Childbirth Checklist Collaboration
To gain a better understanding of how to effectively implement the Checklist in different settings around the world, WHO established the Safe Childbirth Checklist Collaboration. The Collaboration invited members who signed up to it, to use the Checklist
while exploring various factors of implementation.
A total of 34 groups joined the Collaboration between November 2012 and March 2015, representing 29 countries and over 230 sites. Each group shared their experiences and project outcomes
with the Collaboration, providing invaluable insights into the factors that impede or improve successful implementation.
Through a structured review process, WHO collected feedback from the Collaboration projects on the acceptability and feasibility of adopting the Checklist, as well as lessons learnt from its implementation. The results of this evaluation are presented in the following Evaluation Report.
We are very grateful to all the Collaboration members who contributed to this important piece of work. Their experience was integral to WHO then developing an updated version of the Safe Childbirth Checklist and a guide to help health-care facilities successfully implement this tool – one that promises to improve the safety and quality of care around the time of birth.
WHO Safe Childbirth Checklist Collaboration Members
African Region
Kayes Region, Mali
USAID Applying Science to Strengthen and Improve Health Systems (ASSIST)
Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria
University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital
Orogbum, Rivers State, Nigeria
Rivers State Primary Health Care Management Board
Tanzania
AMREF Health Africa
Bahir Dar, Amhara, Ethiopia
University of Aberdeen
Uganda
Management Sciences for Health, USA
Conakry, Guinea
Jhpiego, United States of America
Multi-site project, Africa
Millennium Villages Project, USA
Region of the Americas
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Hospital Alemán
Punta del Este, Uruguay
Sanatorio Semm-Mautone
São Paulo, Brazil
Conjunto Hospitalar do Mandaqui
Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
School of Nursing, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
Brazil, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela
Instituto Nacional de Salud Pública
Mexico
The National Commission of Medical Arbitration (CONAMED)
Colombia
Universidad Nacional de Colombia
Lima, Peru
Hospital National Dos de Mayo
Eastern Mediterranean Region
Cairo, Egypt
Ain Shams Faculty of Medicine
Mashhad, Islamic Republic of Iran
Mashhad University of Medical Sciences
Zgharta, Lebanon
Saydet Zgharta Hospital
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan
University of Göttingen, Germany
Rawalpindi, Pakistan
Holy Family Hospital, Rawalpindi Medical College
Khartoum, Sudan
Royal Care International Hospital
Khartoum, Sudan
Omdurman Maternity Hospital
European Region
Mondovì, Piedmont, Italy
Azienda Sanitaria Locale Cn1 (ASL CN1)
Tuscany, Italy
Clinical Risk Management and Patient Safety Center
Barcelona, Spain
Hospital del Mar-Parc de Salut Mar
South-East Asian Region
Banda Aceh and Yogyakarta, Indonesia
University of Göttingen, Germany
Dhaka, Bangladesh
James P. Grant School of Public Health
Dhaka, Bangladesh
Centre for Reproductive Health and International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research
Rajasthan, India
Jhpiego
Pondicherry, India
Pondicherry Institute
Colombo, Sri Lanka
De Soysa Hospital for Women
Western Pacific Region
Shanghai, China
Nursing School of the Second Military Medical University and Shanghai Pudong New Area People’s Hospital
Manila, The Philippines
Medical City Hospital
Web content composed with the free online wysiwyg HTML editor. Please subscribe for a membership to remove promotional messages from the edited documents.
BetterBirth study
Since 2012, WHO has been supporting a multi-centred randomized controlled trial in more than 100 hospitals in Uttar Pradesh, India, to test whether adoption of the Checklist improves health outcomes for mothers and newborns. The trial is being conducted by the Ariadne Labs, a joint centre of Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Note: The Safe Childbirth Checklist programme represents a joint effort by WHO, acting through the Department of Service Delivery and Safety, the Department of Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health, and the Department of Reproductive Health and Research, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and many individual experts from around the world.
Photo stories