All women should have access to skilled care during pregnancy and childbirth to ensure prevention, detection and management of complications. Assistance by properly trained health personnel with adequate equipment is key to lowering maternal deaths. As it is difficult to accurately measure maternal mortality, and model-based estimates of the maternal mortality ratio cannot be used for monitoring short-term trends, the proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel is used as a proxy indicator for this purpose. This is an MDG indicator.
Definition:
The proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel.
Skilled health personnel have the required skills to provide life-saving obstetric care, including giving the necessary supervision, care and advice to women during pregnancy, labour and the post-partum period; conduct deliveries on their own; and care for newborns. Traditional birth attendants, even if they receive a short training course, are not included.
Estimated in this CHIPS publication using two indicators:
• Percentage of deliveries at home attended by skilled health personnel. Percentage of deliveries that take place at home and are attended by personnel trained: to give the necessary supervision, care and advice to women during pregnancy, labour and the postpartum period; to conduct deliveries on their own; and to care for newborn infants. Expressed as a percentage of total deliveries.
• Percentage of deliveries in health facilities. Percentage of total deliveries in public and private hospitals, clinics and health centres, irrespective of who attended the delivery at those facilities.
Disaggregation:
Education level, Location (urban/rural), Wealth : Wealth quintile, Boundaries : Administrative regions, Boundaries : Health regions, Health personnel, Place of Delivery : Health facilities, Place of Delivery : Home
Method of estimation:
In terms of survey data, some survey reports may present a total percentage of births attended by a type of provider that does not conform to the MDG definition (e.g., total includes provider that is not considered skilled, such as a community health worker). In that case, the percentage delivered by a physician, nurse, or a midwife are totaled and entered into the global database as the MDG estimate.
Predominant type of statistics: adjusted
Method of estimation of global and regional aggregates:
In terms of survey data, some survey reports may present a total percentage of births attended by a type of provider that does not conform to the MDG definition (e.g., total includes provider that is not considered skilled, such as a community health worker). In that case, the percentage delivered by a physician, nurse, or a midwife are totaled and entered into the global database as the MDG estimate.
Predominant type of statistics: adjusted
If you have any feedback, you are welcome to write it here.
If you need to access the old Global Health Observatory data, you can do it here. But before you leave, please provide us your feedback about our new data portal.
