Events

Geraldine Duthe, Institut national d'etudes demographiques, and Visiting Scholar to the Columbia Population Research Center and the Department of Population and Family Health, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, and Stephane Helleringer, Assistant Professor, Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health, will present work entitled, "Counting maternal deaths in sub-Saharan Africa. A case study in Senegal."

Reducing maternal mortality is one of the Millennium Goals for Development. However, measuring maternal mortality levels and trends in sub-Saharan Africa, the region with the highest burden of maternal deaths, represents a big challenge in the absence of reliable statistics on causes of death. To do so, demographers increasingly rely on retrospective survey data on the mortality of a respondent's sisters, but the validity and reliability of these data are uncertain. In 2010, we conducted a validation study in a small population in Senegal where mortality had been continuously monitored for the past 40 years. We matched each retrospective report of a sibling's survival to its prospective record. This presentation is devoted to presenting the results of this study, which points out that maternal deaths are frequently omitted by survey respondents. We draw the major implications of these findings and present the collaborative project we initiated to try and improve maternal mor! tality estimates in developing countries.

The Columbia Population Research Center (CPRC) Seminar Series features distinguished scholars who are working in CPRC's four signature research areas-children, youth, and families; HIV/AIDS and reproductive health; immigration/migration; and urbanism.

This lecture will be available by videoconference at the School of Social Work and live at the Mailman School of Public Health. Please see the CPRC seminar web page for details.
Reservations are required. Email cprc@columbia.edu.