Worldwide, caesarean section rates have been steadily increasing, without significant additional benefit to the health of women or their babies.

In response to requests from health professionals and countries, in 2018 WHO used HRP evidence to develop programmatic guidance on non-clinical interventions that can be implemented to reduce the unnecessary use of caesarean sections.

The release of these recommendations was accompanied by the publication of a  Series in The Lancet on optimizing the use of caesarean section, which discusses many of the issues addressed by the WHO guideline.