Approaches for Measuring Maternal Mortality in Bangladesh
Despite their major social impacts, maternal deaths are relatively infrequent events. They are also difficult events to record. Even in countries with complete recording of births and deaths, maternal deaths are generally underreported because of incorrect classification of cause (Bouvier colle et al; 1991; Atrash et al. 1995). In counties lacking complete vital registration system, the problems are even greater. Not only many maternal deaths be misclassified, they may simply be omitted.
Commonly-used approaches for obtaining data on levels of maternal mortality vary considerably in terms of methodology, source of data and precision of results. The main approaches are described briefly below. As a general rule, maternal deaths are identified by medical certification in the vital registration approach, but generally on the basis of the time of death definition relative to pregnancy in household surveys (including sisterhood surveys), censuses and in Reproductive Age Mortality Studies ( RAMOS).