SeriesGoing to scale with professional skilled care
Section snippets
Trends and patterns of care
We know the care that is needed, but how far have we moved towards providing care for all women? In this section we provide an overview of progress in scaling up maternity care in poor countries. We focus on available information for professional assistance at childbirth, back-up care in the case of complications at childbirth, and antenatal and postpartum care.
Barriers to progress in use of professional skilled care
The slow movement towards care that is increasingly professional, institutional, and, in a few countries, privately provided is evidence of women's choices. That these increases have kept up with and surpassed the increase in the numbers of births in many settings is encouraging. However, the speed of scale-up globally is not rapid enough and gaps in coverage are all too apparent in almost all developing countries. This leaves those excluded from services at risk and opens up wide inequalities
Conclusions
A new era of strategic thinking for maternal and neonatal health should start with a realistic assessment of present care coverage, and move forward by understanding the supply constraints that have blocked progress in developing countries for 20 years. Nowadays, only half the world's women receive care from a skilled professional when giving birth—and they might not receive the quality of care they need. Even fewer women receive the full package of care from pregnancy to the end of the
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