Assessing inequalities in maternal mortality

• Published in: The Lancet (British edition) Vol. 363; no. 9402; p. 5
• Main Author: Gwatkin, Davidson R
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Elsevier Ltd 03.01.2004; Elsevier Limited
• Subjects: Africa - epidemiology; Children & youth; Childrens health; Cross-Cultural Comparison; Developed countries; Developing countries; Developing Countries - statistics & numerical data; Economics; Female; Health; Humans; Indonesia - epidemiology; Industrialized nations; Inequality; LDCs; Maternal mortality; Maternal Mortality - trends; Measurement techniques; Mortality; Mothers; Poverty - statistics & numerical data; Pregnancy; Socioeconomic Factors; Africa; Indonesia; Tanzania
• ISSN: 0140-6736; 1474-547X
• DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(03)15231-2

To date, however, the possessions/characteristics technique has been applied almost exclusively to child health. Adult conditions, such as maternal mortality, have seemed too rare to approach effectively through the household surveys on which the technique relies. [Wendy Graham] and colleagues show that this obstacle, while unquestionably challenging, need not be insurmountable. They show that survey data that are already available are adequate to document the existence of socioeconomic differences in maternal mortality for several countries, and to give a sense of the magnitude of those differences in Indonesia. They also provide a basis for anticipating that comparable maternal mortality data can be obtained for other countries or areas with modest additional effort (by adding sisterhood questions to some of the large householdhealth surveys that currently lack them, for example; or by pooling data from smaller studies in different countries to produce regional estimates). And, as Graham and colleagues say, what's possible for maternal mortality should be feasible for other adult conditions. After their work, what earlier seemed impossible now appears only difficult.