Home based life saving skills: promoting safe motherhood through innovative community-based interventions

In much of the developing world, home birth with unskilled attendants is the norm, and maternal and neonatal mortality rates are high. A comprehensive approach to address this problem needs to upgrade referral facilities and strengthen the skills of trained health care providers. To improve pregnancy outcomes, a program must also provide education, motivation, and mobilization of pregnant women, families, and communities (whose members must come to a common understanding of the need for and the means to prevent death of a woman or neonate). Consequently, the American College of Nurse Midwives (ACNM) has expanded the Life Savings Skills Series to include Home Based Life Saving Skills (HBLSS). HBLSS is a community and competency-based program that aims to reduce maternal and neonatal mortality by increasing access to basic life saving measures within the home and community and by decreasing delays in reaching referral facilities where life-threatening problems can be managed.