The Keystone for Averting Maternal Death & Disability

As a result of an ongoing collaboration between FIGO and the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, a special quarterly section on “The Keystone for Averting Maternal Death and Disability” sponsored by the University is featured in the International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics. Here, the section’s Editor – Judith Fortney – writes about this vitally important initiative.  

The goal of Columbia University’s “Averting Maternal Death and Disability” Program – or “AMDD” for short – is to increase the availability, quality and utilisation of care for women with obstetric complications, especially in developing countries. The new special section of the International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics will share this goal.  

The section has an editorial board comprised of five distinguished thinkers in this field. It is representative of significant agencies and of geographic areas and includes Allan Rosenfield (USA), Mahmoud Fathalla (Egypt), Angela Kamara (Ghana), Carine Ronsmans (Belgium) and Dileep Mavalankar (India). The role of the editorial board will be to set the policy for the section especially as it relates to the substantive and geographic focus.  

Why do we refer to the “keystone”? Well, the arch of safe motherhood consists of many stones – prenatal care, nutrition, education, transport, the “risk approach”, trained attendants, home birth kits and others. But the arch will fall down – and mothers will die – if they do not receive prompt, adequate treatment when they suffer life-threatening complications during pregnancy, delivery or the puerperium. Indeed, several of these approaches explicitly depend on the availability of emergency obstetric care.  

Thus, articles will focus on programmes or interventions – primarily those in developing countries – that are intended to improve the availability and quality of care given to women who experience complications during pregnancy, childbirth and the puerperium and on the proportion of women who receive such care. These interventions can address such questions as provision of transport, drug availability, professional skill improvement, logistics management, and blood bank management.  

If you have an article that you feel would fit into this section, instructions for authors can be obtained electronically by sending an e-mail to http://www.figo.org/docs/mailto:keystone@columbia.edu or by writing to; The IJGO Editorial Assistant, AMDD Program, Center for Population and Family Health, Joseph Mailman School of Public Health, 60 Haven Avenue B-3, New York NY 10032, USA.  

Copies of the AMDD articles contained in the the International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics in Adobe Acrobat PDF format may be obtained by clicking on the relevant link below. You may download the free Adobe Acrobat Reader here.

Because of the size of the files, downloading can be slow and may take several minutes so please be patient!

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