Maternal mortality in southern India

In a 4 year prospective community survey of 20,000 women randomly selected in North Arcot District of Tamil Nadu State in South India, the maternal mortality rates per 1,000 liveborn were estimated to be 17.4 and 16.6 for rural and semi-urban areas, respectively. The rates based only on direct causes were 11.9 in rural and 14.4 in semi-urban areas. As expected, these figures are considerably higher than those based on official or hospital statistics. Factors associated with such high mortality and the implications for programme planning and implementation are discussed.