Stillbirth Definition and Data Quality Assessment for Health Management Information Systems (HMIS)

There were an estimated 2 million stillbirths in 2019. The importance of these deaths, both in terms of their overall number and their impact on women, families, health professionals and wider society, is increasingly being recognized. It has also been widely accepted that stillbirths are largely preventable when women have improved access to high-quality care along the continuum from pre-conception to childbirth. While most governments now recognize that stillbirths are mostly preventable, large gaps exist in national- and global-level data on stillbirth. In order to end these unnecessary deaths by 2030, urgent investments are needed to improve the data on this often overlooked aspect of child mortality.

This guideline seeks to support two specific audiences: (1) health care workers, to provide guidance on the data elements and indicators needed to collect high quality stillbirth data and (2) data managers/public health professionals at local, regional and national level, to provide guidance on the data required to assess current stillbirth data quality and to execute relevant improvements to these data, thus driving informed policies to end preventable deaths.