How much does safe motherhood cost

Planners and decision-makers have a wide variety of choices when trying to address the causes of maternal and newborn mortality and morbidity. In deciding what a new safe motherhood program should consist of or which changes should be made to an existing program the cost of each option must be carefully assessed. To help program planners and managers measure the costs the World Health Organization and the World Bank developed the Mother-Baby Package Costing Spreadsheet based upon the Mother-Baby Package a set of interventions designed to reduce maternal and neonatal mortality in developing countries. The model is inclusive but can be readily modified to fit the maternal health program planners own needs and priorities. It can be used to estimate either the cost of an entire program for the district being studied or only the cost of upgrading an existing one. The model provides estimates of total cost cost per capita and cost per birth for the district disaggregated by input intervention and service location.