Monitoring perinatal outcomes in hospitals in Kabul, Afghanistan: The first step of a quality assurance process.

Objective: Afghanistan is one of the countries with highest maternal and perinatal mortality in the world. Lack of reliable data, however, makes it difficult to select and prioritise the interventions that would be most cost effective. To gain some evidence, we review and analyse perinatal outcomes in facilities in Kabul and examine the role of patient risk and clinical practice factors.

Cesarean delivery surveillance system at a maternity hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Objective: To use an active facility-based maternal and newborn surveillance system to describe cesarean delivery practices and outcomes in a resource-poor setting.

Methods: Using data from operating room logbooks, 392 cesarean deliveries were evaluated between April 1 and June 30 2006 at a large public maternity hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Results: The perinatal mortality rate was 89 per 1000 births: 57% antepartum and 37% intrapartum stillbirths.