• Maternal, newborn and child health

Maternal, newborn and child health

Improvements in preventive and care-seeking behaviours to reduce maternal mortality in rural Africa depend on the knowledge and attitudes of women and communities. Surveys have indicated a poor awareness of maternal health problems by individual women. This article in The Lancet reports the perceptions of women's groups to such issues in the rural Mchinji district of Malawi. The report shows how participatory women's groups were used in the Mchinji district which identified maternal health problems and prioritised problems they considered most important . The maternal health problems most commonly identified by more than half the groups included anaemia, malaria, retained placenta and obstructed labour.
HIV and AIDS and sepsis were identified or prioritised much less because complexity and contextual factors hindered their consideration. The article finds that rural Malawian women meeting in participatory groups showed a developed awareness of maternal health problems and the concern and motivation to address them. The authors highlight how community mobilisation strategies, such as women's groups, might be effective at reducing maternal mortality because they can draw on the collective capacity in communities to solve problems and make women's voices heard by decision-makers.

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