MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (CMC) — The Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) is urging Caribbean countries to take a closer look at the “near misses” of pregnancies so as to better understand their causes.

PAHO said that an estimated 10 million women globally and more than a million women in the Americas suffer disability or other severe consequences from complications of pregnancy and childbirth.

“Countries throughout the Americas are working to reduce maternal mortality, but understanding the causes of severe maternal illness is important, too, and could prevent extreme suffering and disability for tens of thousands of women in our region,” said Dr Suzanne Jacob Serruya, Director of PAHO’s Latin American Centre for Perinatology/Women and Reproductive Health (CLAP/WR), on the International Day of Action for Women’s Health 2014.

For every woman who dies from maternal complications in the Americas, PAHO estimates that 20 others — around 1.2 million each year — suffer a life-threatening complication.

A global World Health Organisation (WHO) study — ‘Moving Beyond Essential Interventions for Reduction of Maternal Mortality’ — showed that the number of women with severe morbidity [illness] varies among different hospitals in the Americas, from three to 38 cases per maternal death.

In some hospitals, the rate is nearly double the global average of 20 cases of severe illness per maternal death, PAHO said.

It said CLAP/WR has designed a new record-keeping model based on variables defined by WHO in 23 institutions from 12 countries in the region that allows health professionals to have a road map that guides them in the care of pregnant women in order to anticipate and avoid these cases.

When they do appear, it offers instruction on how to record them in order to measure the exact magnitude of cases and to generate awareness among health personnel, the scientific community, universities and pregnant women and their families, PAHO said.

It said this tool has demonstrated great utility in identifying, recording and providing information to analyse near miss cases and the quality of care provided.

PAHO said studying maternal morbidity is feasible because the number of cases is small, although it is more frequent than maternal death.

It said cases of maternal morbidity occur in health institutions, adding that professionals are more willing to analyse processes with positive endings, and women who survive are qualified witnesses to tell about the events and experiences that can be learned from to prevent repetitions of these situations in the future.

In the year 2011, PAHO noted that the health ministers of the Americas took “an important step forward” with the approval of a plan to speed up the reduction of maternal deaths, as well as severe maternal morbidity.

“However, it’s now been more than two years since the resolution’s approval and not every Member State is deeply analysing this subject on a regular basis,” it lamented.