Maternal Mortality Estimation from House-Listing Operation of National Level Sample Surveys

Maternal mortality remained as one of the indicators of health and development goal. Many countries lack the estimate of maternal mortality, and in some countries, estimates are not very reliable. In case of India, Sample Registration System (SRS) estimates of maternal mortality based on three year pooled data are considered reliable in comparison to other sample survey. It may be noted that, in many sample surveys, rare events are not studies as it required large sample size. However, if the operation of house-listing can be used meaningfully to identify a rare event like maternal mortality and there is a high probability that all the members of household will remember this event. It may be noted that, around 5 to 20 percent of project expenditure is devoted for this operation, and this operation should be utilized to identify maternal deaths. Number of deaths covered during house-listing operation of any large scale survey will be certainly more than SRS. This will also help to get reliable estimates at the state level especially for those high focused states, where immediate attention is required for maternal care programme in India. The causes of deaths obtained from the nationally representative sample will be much more useful than localized oral autopsy survey.