Dear Colleagues,

On 15 February, WHO issued a press release to launch new guidance on intrapartum care. This forms part of WHO’s efforts to improve the quality of care around the time of childbirth in the SDG era. The guideline contains 56 recommendations related to supportive care throughout labour and childbirth; care during the first, second and third stages of labour; and immediate care of the woman and newborn after birth.

Kindly share this message with your networks for wide dissemination.

· Full guideline document: “WHO recommendations: intrapartum care for a positive childbirth experience” and the supporting evidence document – available here.  

· WHO Department of Reproductive Health and Research (RHR) Web Story – available here.

· Special Commentary by the Assistant Director-General [Family, Women’s, and Children’s Health (FWC) Cluster] – available here.

· User-friendly slide deck summarising the rationale, methods, and highlights of the recommendations (best viewed in slide show mode; Quicktime ® player required for Slide #8) – available for download here.

· Infographics highlighting the overarching messages of the guidelines – available here.  

We encourage you to disseminate the guideline and the related publications through your networks. You can learn more and contribute to further discussion by following @HRPresearch on twitter.

WHO welcomes comments and suggestions on the published documents and these should be directed to [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask].

With thanks,

Femi Oladapo, Mercedes Bonet, and Metin Gülmezoglu

on behalf of the WHO team

Olufemi T. Oladapo, MBBS, MPH, FWACS (Obgyn), FICS

Maternal and Perinatal health and Preventing Unsafe Abortion

HRP – UNDP · UNFPA · UNICEF · WHO · World Bank Special Programme of Research,

Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction

Department of Reproductive Health and Research
World Health Organization, Avenue Appia 20, Geneva 27
CH-1211 Switzerland
Tel: +41-22-7914226
E-mail: [log in to unmask]

Please visit our online RH Update Newsletter

http://www.who.int/reproductivehealth/RHUpdate/en/index.html