Assessment tool for hospital care: improving the quality of care for reproductive, maternal, neonatal, child and adolescent health in South-East Asia

Overview

Available statistics on the causes of maternal, newborn and child mortality highlight the fact that most of the deaths are as a result complications during and following pregnancy and/or childbirth; or from severe illnesses in children that require optimal care at health facilities. Much of the maternal deaths that occur in high burden countries result mainly from five morbidities: severe bleeding, high blood pressure, sepsis, unsafe abortion and obstructed labour; and the leading causes for child deaths being neonatal causes (preterm complications, birth asphyxia and neonatal infections), pneumonia, diarrhoea, malaria, and malnutrition. These deaths are ‘mostly preventable' because the necessary medical interventions exist and are well known. However, the main obstacles are lack of access and poor quality of care provided in hospitals during pregnancy, childbirth and early postnatal period for the mothers and newborns, and poor case management of severely ill children who are under five years of age.

This generic assessment tool is to be used to evaluate the quality of care for mothers, babies and children in hospitals, based on standards derived from the WHO Pocket book of Hospital Care for Children and the WHO Integrated Management of Pregnancy and Childbirth (IMPAC). The aim is to aid Ministry of Health, key stakeholders and partners who are involved in quality of care improvement process, to carry out comprehensive assessments of maternal, neonatal and paediatric health care provided at facility level in a systematic way. Ultimately, this is to contribute to identifying gaps in key areas of maternal, newborn and child health care that need to be improved.