Rate of Caesarean Section As a Process Indicator of Safe-Motherhood Programmes: The Case of Kenya (Report‪)‬

INTRODUCTION More than 10 years after the launching of the Safe-motherhood Initiative in Nairobi, Kenya, the country still experiences high levels of maternal mortality. Most stakeholders in the field of reproductive health recognize this silent tragedy. Despite this, exact figure of the burden of this maternal health problem is not available. Besides, the magnitude of maternal mortality is still unknown in Kenya, but estimates vary between 67 and 771 per 100,000 births (1-5). Although the maternal mortality rates are used as indicators of quality of maternal care, they are often unreliable, costly to obtain, or not suitable for monitoring the quality of mother-child healthcare. Moreover, the range of maternal mortality ratios depends on the measuring methods used, such as vital statistics, or population-based surveys (1,6-11).