Ending Eclampsia: PHC PH/E_plus Model

Pre-eclampsia and eclampsia (PE/E)—life-threatening high blood pressure and excess protein in the urine after 20 weeks gestation—is a leading cause of pregnancy-related deaths. These deaths are preventable, yet essential medicines and tools to treat this disorder are often unavailable in low-resource settings. The Population Council implemented a two-phase intervention involving training, mentoring, and supervising providers at secondary facilities on detection and management of PE/E patients (Phase 1), and training primary health care (PHC) providers to administer a modified loading dose of magnesium sulphate and refer women to secondary health facilities for monitoring (Phase 2). This brief describes the Population Council’s implementation research study to evaluate this task-shifting process around the prevention, detection, and management of PE/E at the PHC level. The study showed that not only were PHC providers effectively able to carry out this task, but maternal mortality in the intervention group decreased