WHO guidance for measuring maternal mortality from a census

Overview

This guidance is significant because of three important messages it conveys. Firstly, the census represents one of several potential options for measuring maternal mortality in low-income countries.

These options have expanded considerably over the last 25 years. New tools and approaches have been developed, new ways for capturing maternal deaths have been incorporated into existing sources, and new analytic techniques have been developed for creating model estimates for countries lacking empirical data. In other words, we know how to generate estimates of the level of maternal mortality: the bottlenecks lie more in terms of inadequate investment, both in existing routine systems or special studies and in technical capacity in-country to guide the capture, analysis and interpretation of data.