PMNCH Knowledge Summaries: #13 - Make stillbirths count
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Stillbirths are largely invisible as a social and public health problem, particularly in low-income and middle-income countries. The global burden is vast with an estimated 2.6 million stillbirths each year. Nearly 45% of stillbirths occur during labour. There are proven, cost-effective interventions that could significantly reduce this burden, including providing emergency obstetric care and ensuring that a skilled professional attends births. Delivering on related commitments to the UN Secretary-General’s Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health will have triple benefits: reducing not only maternal and newborn deaths, but also stillbirths.
The Millennium Development Goals do not count stillbirths, nor do global health tracking initiatives such as the Countdown to 2015. Social stigma about stillbirths and a lack of public awareness contribute to the silence.
For the first time, researchers from leading organizations worked with the World Health Organization (WHO) on a comprehensive set of stillbirth estimates by country (see Figure 1). The Lancet Series on Stillbirths, April 2011, draws on these data. Every day there are more than 7,300 stillbirths in the world; each year this amounts to 2.6 million stillbirths.
About 98% of stillbirths happen in low and middle-income countries and most (75%) of them are clustered in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. The highest stillbirth rates of 46 and 41 per 1,000 births are in Pakistan and Nigeria respectively; the lowest rates are in Finland and Singapore (2 per 1,000 births).
Stillbirths count for families and counting them in policy and programs is important. The first step towards this should be to include stillbirths in all pregnancy - and childbirth - related tracking mechanisms and relevant reports. Meeting commitments to the Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health will help prevent maternal, newborn and child deaths as well as stillbirths.
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