Stillbirth is the loss of a pregnancy after 22 weeks gestation. Around 2.6 million stillbirths occur every year around the world, primarily in developing countries. However, the kind of attention being addressed to other issues in the developing world has not been focused on stillbirth, leading the rates of stillbirth to decrease more slowly than other death rates. In an attempt to draw more attention to this issue – with its profound impact on the family and community – the Lancet has published a series of articles on stillbirth, addressing some of the impacts, causes, and a plan to reduce the number of stillbirths in half by 2020.
The information provided by this comprehensive series can be summarized visually within a Cause Map. A thorough root cause analysis built as a Cause Map can capture all of the causes in a simple, intuitive format that fits on one page. We begin the Cause Map much as the series begins – with a focus on the impacts of stillbirth, beginning with the 2.6 million deaths per year. We can consider this an impact to the public safety goal. A related impact is an impact to the public safety goal – lack of access to quality care. Starting with these two goals, we can begin an analysis of the problems contributing to stillbirth.
Although the data collection for stillbirth lacks consistency, there are five major causes of stillbirth that we’ll address here: fetal growth restriction, childbirth complications, maternal infection, maternal disorders, and congenital abnormalities. At a very, very high level, we can discuss some of the causes of these issues, which the Lancet series hopes to address in order to halve the number of stillbirths by 2020.
Fetal growth restriction can be caused by inadequate prenatal care. Increased fetal growth restriction detection and management is expected to reduce the number of stillbirths by 107,000 per year. Childbirth complications can be caused by lack of quality obstetric care and/or labor past 41 weeks. Comprehensive emergency obstetric care is expected to reduce yearly stillbirths by 696,000 and identification/induction of women who are past 41 weeks gestation is expected to reduce another 52,000.
The main maternal infections of concern are malaria and syphilis. Additional malaria prevention (such as insecticide treated nets) would reduce annual stillbirths by 35,000 and syphilis detection/treatment another 136,000. Maternal disorders of concern are mainly diabetes and hypertension. Detection and management of maternal diabetes and hypertension would prevent 24,000 and 57,000 stillbirths per year, respectively. Congenital abnormalities can be caused by insufficient folic acid intake at and after conception. Increased access to folic acid supplementation would save 27,000 lives.
If all of these recommendations can be fully implemented, more than 1 million stillbirths could be prevented each year. Far more detail can be added to this Cause Map, depending of the level of analysis required. As with any investigation the level of detail in the analysis is based on the impact of the incident on the organization’s overall goals. To see the outline, Cause Map, and solutions, please click “Download PDF” above. To learn more about stillbirth, and the goals, please see the Lancet series.