Box 1.
Terms and Definitions
| World Health Organization |
| Maternal death: the death of a woman while pregnant or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy, irrespective of the duration and site of the pregnancy, from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy or its management but not from unintentional or incidental causes. |
| Late maternal death: the death of a woman from direct or indirect obstetric causes, more than 42 days but <1 year after termination of pregnancy. |
| Pregnancy-related death: the death of a woman while pregnant or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy, irrespective of the cause of death (obstetric and nonobstetric) and includes unintentional/accidental and incidental causes. |
| Direct obstetric death: the death of a woman resulting from obstetric complications of the pregnant state (pregnancy, labor, and puerperium) from interventions, omissions, incorrect treatment, or from a chain of events resulting from any of the above. |
| Indirect obstetric death: the death of a woman resulting from previous existing disease or disease that developed during pregnancy and that was not due to direct obstetric causes, but that was aggravated by physiologic effects of pregnancy. |
| Maternal mortality ratio: the number of maternal deaths during a given time period per 100,000 live births during the same time period. |
| MMRate: the number of maternal deaths during a given time period divided by person-years lived by women of reproductive age (age 15–49 years) in a population during the same time period. |
| Adult lifetime risk of maternal death: the probability that a 15-year-old girl will eventually die from a maternal cause. |
| Proportion maternal: the proportion of deaths among women of reproductive age (age 15–49 years) that are due to maternal causes. |
| Live birth: the complete expulsion or extraction from its mother of a product of conception, irrespective of the duration of the pregnancy, which, after such separation, breathes or shows any other evidence of life (e.g., beating of the heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles) whether or not the umbilical cord has been cut or the placenta is attached. Each product of such a birth is considered live born. |
| Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (DRH and DVS). DRS and DVS are part of CDC. The way it is written it seems to be 3 separate entities CDC, DRH and DVS. |
| Pregnancy-associated death: the death of a woman during pregnancy or within 1 year of the end of pregnancy from a cause that is not related to pregnancy. All deaths that have a temporal relationship to pregnancy are included. |
| Pregnancy-related death: the death of a woman during pregnancy or within 1 year of the end of pregnancy from a pregnancy complication, a chain of events initiated by pregnancy, or the aggravation of an unrelated condition by the physiological effects of pregnancy. In addition to having a temporal relationship to pregnancy, these deaths are causally related to pregnancy or its management. |
| PRMR: pregnancy-related deaths per 100,000 live births. |
| Preventability: a death is considered preventable if the committee determines that there was at least some chance of the death being averted by one or more reasonable changes to patient, community, provider, facility, and/or system factors. |
| MMRate: maternal deaths as defined by the World Health Organization per 100,000 live births. |
| Late MMRate: late maternal deaths as defined by World Health Organization per 100,000 live births. |
DRH, Division of Reproductive Health; DVS, Division of Vital Statistics; MMRate, maternal mortality rate; PRMR, Pregnancy-Related Mortality Ratio.
DVS uses the term MMRate (equivalent measure of WHO's maternal mortality ratio), and DRH uses the term PRMR. DVS's MMRate term is referred as MMR in the text.