The majority of births in Nigeria, India and Pakistan occur outside regular hospital facilities (indexed by the proportion of skilled attendants at birth) as displayed in Figure 1.
The proportion of births attended by skilled attendants in Ethiopia is very much lower than that of countries in SSA.
The proportion of births attended by skilled attendants in the health facilities was 6.6% of expected births, though the variation was large.
An increased proportion of births attended by skilled attendants is a significant factor in reducing maternal and perinatal mortality and morbidity.
On the place of delivery, some African countries including Equatorial Guinea, Morocco, Rwanda, Egypt, Angola and Niger have adopted the strategy of increasing the proportion of births attended to by skilled attendants as a way of reducing incidences of maternal and child mortality and this is yielding positive results (MDG Report 2012).
In parallel, institutional mortality rates and the proportion of births attended by traditional birth attendants are reported to be increasing.
Furthermore, the proportion of deliveries attended by trained birth attendants increased from 32% in 1991 to 79% in 2007.
As Nepal strives to attain the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the government is committed to increasing the proportion of births attended by skilled birth attendants (SBAs) (9).
However, the one clear message emerging from essentially all global maternal health guidance is some version of "ensure skilled care for every birth" —that is, to increase the proportion of deliveries attended by "skilled birth attendants" (SBAs).
The proportion of deliveries attended by traditional birth attendants declined dramatically from 29.3 % in 2006 to 5.4 % in 2011, resulting in a total decrease of 81.5 % between 2006 and 2011.> The magnitude of annual change in proportion of facility deliveries jumped from 29.6 % between 2006 and 2007 to 42.5 % between 2007 and 2008, and then gradually slowed until 4.1 % between 2010 and 2011.
