Bangladesh Maternal Mortality and Health Care Survey 2010

Author(s):

Year: 2012

Abstract:

The Government of Bangladesh has invested in a maternal health program with support from a number of development partners. Committed to achieving the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 5, Bangladesh’s targets are to reduce the maternal mortality ratio (MMR) to 143 per 100,000 live births by 2015, and to increase skilled attendance at birth to 50 percent by 2016. In the last decade, the health, nutrition, and population sector program of Bangladesh has adopted a national strategy for maternal health focusing on Emergency Obstetric Care (EmOC) for reducing maternal mortality, focusing especially on early detection and appropriate referral of complications, and improvement of quality of care. Since 2001, the government embarked on program to retrain existing government community health care workers as Community Skilled Birth Attendants (CSBA) as the primary operational strategy for achieving the 2015 target of 50 percent skilled attendance at birth.

The second Bangladesh Maternal Mortality and Health Care Survey was conducted in 2010 (BMMS 2010) with the major objectives being to provide a maternal mortality estimate for the period 2008-2010, to determine whether MMR has significantly declined from 1998-2001, and to ascertain the causes of maternal death. The first such national level survey was conducted in 2001 (BMMS 2001).

The survey was carried out in a national sample of 175,000 households, interviewing ever-married women 13 to 49, as well as investigating any deaths to women of reproductive ages, especially maternal and pregnancy-related deaths. Data collection for the survey was conducted from 18 January to 6 August, 2010.