Assessment of maternal mortality in Tanzania

Abstract

Objective To assess maternal mortality.Design Prospective community-based survey, a sisterhood method survey and hospital data. SettingThe study was performed in communities in a rural area in Northwestern Tanzania and the local district hospital. ResultsFour hundred and forty-seven pregnant women in the community survey were followed up as far as six weeks after delivery; there were 2865 respondents in the sisterhood survey; the hospital study involved 7526 deliveries. Maternal morality ratios derived from the prospective community-based survey, the sisterhood method survey and hospital data analysis were 241, 297, and 845 per 100000 live births, respectively. ConclusionsHospital data tend to overestimate maternal mortality in these communities. The sisterhood method is easier and more convenient than a prospective community-based study.

Maternal mortality in a Kenyan pastoralist population

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Shed some light on darkness: will Tanzania reach the millennium development goals?

“…A large study compared different methods for assessing maternal deaths in northwest Tanzania using three tools: a prospective community based survey; a sisterhood survey where respondents were asked about deaths among their adult sisters, and a hospital survey (14). This study, performed 1986–1991, came to the conclusion that hospital data tend to overestimate maternal deaths by a factor of three.…”

Repetition of a sisterhood survey at district level in Malawi: the challenge to achieve MDG 5

“…This technique was designed to avoid high costs by overcoming the need for a large sample size 7 8. The sisterhood method has two forms: (1) the original indirect method by which maternal mortality is derived from respondents' answers to four basic questions, and (2) the direct method which is rather time-consuming and requires a larger sample size, by which respondents are asked to provide more detailed answers to 11 questions pertaining to maternal mortality in their families.…”