Strategic Purpose and Research Focus

The centres research focus is developing and implementing effective interventions in maternal, newborn and child health care at primary and secondary levels of care.

  1. Ascertaining the prevalence of abnormal resistance indices determined by continuous wave Doppler (Umbiflow) performed in a low-risk population of pregnant women and prevent stillbirths. The initial study demonstrated that using the Umbiflow in low-risk pregnant women reduced the number of antenatal stillbirths by half. Follow-up studies have been conducted on infants whose mothers were assessed with Umbiflow.
  2. Designing and testing ways to train health care professionals in emergency obstetric care by adapting the ESMOE programme.
  3. Improve basic antenatal care by new strategies of providing novel referral systems
  4. Operational research on and evaluation of the implementation and scale-up of kangaroo mother care and other maternal and newborn health interventions at different health-system levels.
  5. To provide ongoing information on the quality of perinatal and child health care services, identify the missed opportunities in these services and provide evidence-based recommendations which if implemented would reduce perinatal and child deaths through clinical audit programmes; Maternal Morbidity and Mortality Audit System (MaMMAS), Perinatal Problem Identification System (PPIP) and Child Health Care Problem Identification Programme (Child PIP)
  6. Revise the national guidelines for managing the care of women in labour
  7. The Siyakhula study which assesses factors impacting fetal and infant immunity and growth in HIV- and antiretroviral-exposed uninfected children
  8. To improve the quality of obstetric care in midwife-led obstetric units as well as in their referral district hospitals, using a geographical catchment area approach within the health districts through CLEVER maternity care.
  9. Testing the new Intrapartum care model and the new World Health Organization labour monitoring tool: a feasibility study
  10. An Integrated Quality Improvement Approach to Improve Sexual, Reproductive, Maternal and Neonatal Health Outcomes in South Africa, Mphatlalatsane.
  11. Improving Paediatric HIV case-based surveillance at District level in South Africa

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