FIGO Save the Mothers Initiative: the Pakistan-UK collaboration

The pilot study in Punjab, Pakistan was one of the five paired demonstration projects sponsored by FIGO in the "Save the Mothers" maternal mortality project. The goal of the project was to bring basic and comprehensive emergency obstetric care (EmOC) to a semiurban and rural area some 30 km from Lahore, where effectively there was none. The aim was to achieve this by using the existing facilities within the rural health system without the deployment of extra specialist staff other than as initial facilitators. This report shows trebling of some performance indicators and an improvement in met need. There is coincidentally a similar increase in the uptake of general medical services. Reducing maternal mortality requires building local capacity for EmOC; the essential components being the premises, trained personnel, equipment, and availability of drugs and blood. Availability and provision of EmOC coupled with changes in the attitude of the population resulted in marked improvement of process indicators.