The Lancet  
Apr 23, 2011  Volume 377  Number 9775  Pages 1379 – 1464
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/issue/current

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Pay-for-performance and the Millennium Development Goals
Dominic Montagu, Gavin Yamey
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Only 23 countries are on course to reach Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 5: to reduce maternal mortality ratio by 75% by 2015.1 One reason for this slow progress is that, in many low-income and middle-income countries, most poor women deliver at home without skilled attendance, and thus face a high rate of obstetric complications. Our recent analysis, for example, found that in sub-Saharan Africa, from 2003 to the present, 78% of births among the poorest women occurred at home, of which 56% were unattended.