By Nonkululeko Shibula, Umzanyana Birth Services, from the Stillbirth Advocacy Working Group. I ran into a neighbor as I entered the elevator, and she unintentionally triggered a breakdown I tried my best to avoid. "Congratulations! Is it a boy or a girl?" she cheerfully asked, not realizing that I had...
Preterm birth is now the leading cause of child deaths, accounting for more than 1 in 5 of all deaths of children occurring before their 5th birthday. The seminal report, “Born too soon: decade of action on preterm birth”, launched in May 2023, sounds the alarm on this “silent emergency”...
Strengthening Community-Based Perinatal Mortality Surveillance Systems Written by Ilana R. Siegal, MD, MA, Mamadou Berthé, PhD, and Modibo Soumaré, MD, from the Stillbirth Advocacy Working Group A 26-year-old woman arrived at an urban health center in Mali, West Africa, 40 weeks pregnant. A medical officer had referred her to the...
Written by Chowa Tembo Kasengele, MS, BSN, and Ilana R. Siegal, MD, MA from the Stillbirth Advocacy Working Group According to Zambia’s new Bereavement Training Guidelines, “don’t worry, God will give you another child” is not a reassuring phrase for expectant mothers coping with stillbirth; no parent can know God’s...
In 2015, the Government of India launched ‘Dakshata’, meaning adroitness, across the country, to reduce the maternal mortality ratio and stillbirth rate. The initiative aimed to strengthen the quality of care (QoC) during and immediately after childbirth through focused and customized trainings for strategic skill-building of providers on high-impact essential...