title: Quality of maternal and neonatal care in Central Asia and Europe--lessons learnt.
abstract: In the World Health Organization (WHO) European region despite official high coverage of essential interventions for maternal and neonatal care, there are still significant gaps in the delivery of effective interventions. Since 2001, WHO designed and implemented the Making Pregnancy Safer programme, which includes hands-on training courses in effective perinatal care for maternity teams, development of clinical guidelines, maternal mortality and morbidity case reviews, and assessments of quality of care. This has contributed to enhancing capacity at country level to improve organisation and provision of care. This paper describes the programme's components, challenges, achievements and results.
authors.affiliation: European School for Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health, Trieste, Italy.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bacci
mesh_terms: D001209:Asia, Central; D005060:Europe; D006293:Health Promotion; D006801:Humans; D008427:Maternal Health Services / Q000592:standards*; D008428:Maternal Mortality; D018743:Perinatal Care / Q000592:standards*; D014944:World Health Organization
keywords: Assessment of quality of care; beyond the numbers; clinical guidelines; effective perinatal care; maternal mortality, morbidity case reviews; quality of care