The University of Pretoria's Research Centre for Maternal, Fetal, Newborn and Child Health Care Strategies is committed to improving maternal and child health outcomes in South Africa and across low- and middle-income countries. Embedded within the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Pretoria, the Centre works in close collaboration with the South African National Department of Health, provincial health departments, and numerous international health organisations. It plays a pivotal role in developing, implementing, and evaluating innovative, evidence-based strategies to reduce maternal, perinatal, and child mortality.

With a strong understanding of the National Integrated Maternal and Perinatal Care Guidelines, the Research Centre plays a key role in aligning its strategies and training programmes with national priorities. The Research Centre has extensive experience in developing and delivering health training to ensure these guidelines are implemented effectively at facility and district levels across South Africa.

Our Current Projects

Our current work spans implementation science, clinical innovation, and national surveillance to strengthen maternal and child health across South Africa. 

Sihamba Kunye is an implementation science project in Tshwane, Gauteng, focused on delivering an integrated postnatal care package—the “First 1000-day Roadmap”—that aligns care for mothers and infants at the same service point. 

Through Siyakubona, we strengthen antenatal care by training midwives to perform point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) for pregnancy dating, fetal assessment, placental localisation, and early detection of complications, aiming to increase timely ultrasounds before 24 weeks and improve maternal and perinatal outcomes while evaluating POCUS impact across facilities. 

The Sibona Abantwana, sub-study of the Siyakubona project, investigates why placental insufficiency affects over 10% of healthy pregnancies in Tshwane by recruiting mother–infant pairs—including groups with preeclampsia, placental insufficiency, healthy pregnancies, and an additional cohort of preterm infants—to explore links between placental function, growth, and neurodevelopment up to one year of age. 

In continued partnership with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), we advance the implementation and evaluation of Umbiflow™, a low-cost Doppler device that detects abnormal umbilical artery blood flow and fetal growth restriction. Our ongoing collaborative work focuses on strengthening training, research, and programme scale-up to improve early risk detection and reduce preventable stillbirths across primary healthcare settings. 

In addition, the Research Centre supports South Africa’s three major clinical audit programmes—PPIP, MaMMAS, and Child PIP—which analyse perinatal deaths, maternal mortality and morbidity, and under-five child deaths to identify avoidable factors, strengthen quality of care, guide policy, and ensure accountability across the health system.