Belgian Audit system for Maternal Mortality

On very rare occasions a mother will die during pregnancy or childbirth in Belgium. We estimate about 12 women per year, based on current data of STATBEL and the Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) of our neighboring countries. At this point (december 2020) we know very little about these mothers. The information of their death is limited to the data on the death certificates, and in Flanders from what was communicated as the cause of death to the SPE (Vlaamse Studiecentrum voor Perinatale Epidemiologie). This unlike our neighboring countries (the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France, Italy) who have an enhanced maternal mortality registration and analysis system since years. The most known being the MBRRACE-UK, Mothers and Babies: Reducing Risk through Audits and Confidential Enquiries across the UK. Thanks to these systems we know that an important number of the deceased mothers had an underlying disease, for example a heart disease, which aggravated during pregnancy. And importantly, the in-depth analyses of maternal deaths in our neighboring countries revealed 'substandard care' in more than half of cases, which (may have) contributed to the death of these mothers. Therefore, the Federal Public Service of Public Health strongly supports the Belgian Analysis system for Maternal Mortality that registers and analyses the cases of maternal death in Belgium, in a structured manner by a national multidisciplinary expert team.