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Value of Family Planning for Improving Maternal Health in Rural Afghanistan

2012

This article, published in the Afghanistan Journal of Public Health, uses a model designed to simulate the natural history of pregnancy and associated maternal mortality and morbidity contextualized to Afghanistan to assess the cost-effectiveness of family planning in the rural Maywand district of Kandahar.

Using total fertility rate, pregnancy-related complications, maternal mortality ratio, lifetime risk of maternal death, and proportionate mortality ratio as outcomes, the model finds that increasing family planning from 8% to 30-50% could reduce the total fertility rate from 6.6 to 5.1-3.9. Spreading this throughout Afghanistan could prevent 166,000-210,000 maternal deaths. These results illustrate the importance of investing in family planning to improve overall maternal health outcomes.

 

Source:

Carvalho N, Goldie SJ, Salehi A. The Value of Family Planning for Improving Maternal Health in Rural Afghanistan: The Example of Kandahar. Afghanistan Journal of Public Health 2012; 1: 12-19. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258238597_The_Value_of_Family_Planning_for_Improving_Maternal_Health_in_Rural_Afghanistan_The_Example_of_Kandahar