Importance Based on older analyses, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends
that cesarean delivery rates should not exceed 10 to 15 per 100 live births to optimize …

Background Ensuring the right to respectful care for maternal and newborn health, a critical
dimension of quality and acceptability, requires meeting standards for Respectful Maternity …

Background In low-resource settings, many programs recommend that women who are infected
with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) stop breast-feeding early. We conducted a …

Background Pneumonia and malaria, two of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality
among children under five in Zambia, often have overlapping clinical manifestations. Zambia …

Background Anaemia is a reduction in haemoglobin concentration below a threshold, resulting
from various factors including severe blood loss during and after childbirth. Symptoms of …

Sub-Saharan Africa contains over 60% of the world's HIV infections and Zambia is among
the most severely affected countries in the region. As antiretroviral programs have been …

Background The prevalence of facility-based childbirth in low-resource settings has
increased dramatically during the past two decades, yet gaps in the quality of care persist and …

The WHO Safe Childbirth Checklist (SCC) was developed to ensure the delivery of essential
maternal and perinatal care practices around the time of childbirth. A research collaboration …

Background . Rates of perinatal human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) transmission are higher
among HIV-infected mothers with more advanced disease, but effects of maternal disease …

Background Modelled mortality estimates have been useful for health programmes in low-income
and middle-income countries. However, these estimates are often based on sparse …