Mary Ellen Stanton

TL;DR: High coverage of essential interventions did not imply reduced maternal mortality in the health-care facilities the authors studied, and the maternal severity index (MSI) had good accuracy for maternal death prediction in women with markers of organ dysfunction.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors report the main findings of the WHO Multicountry Survey on Maternal and Newborn Health (WHOMCS), which aimed to assess the burden of complications related to pregnancy, the coverage of key maternal health interventions, and use of the maternal severity index (MSI) in a global network of health facilities.

TL;DR: Cervical dilatation during labour in the slowest-yet-normal women can progress more slowly than the widely accepted benchmark of 1 cm/hour, irrespective of parity, and average labour curves may not truly reflect the variability associated with labour progression.

TL;DR: Assessing the effects of financial incentives—performance-based incentives (PBIs), insurance, user fee exemption programmes, conditional cash transfers, and vouchers—summarizes the evidence and discusses issues of context, programme design and implementation, cost-effectiveness, and sustainability.

TL;DR: Many countries will need to double, or more than double, their current annual rate of reduction of maternal mortality to ensure sufficient progress toward national targets and the global Sustainable Development Goals.