RAPID
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Rapid Ascertainment Process for Institutional Deaths (RAPID) is a method designed to identify un-reported maternal deaths within health facilities, and to highlight areas for improvement in routine institutional death reporting. Developed by Immpact, RAPID involves reviewing health facility records of all deaths of women of reproductive age and subsequently identifying pregnancy-related deaths. This process uncovers pregnancy-related deaths that may have been missed in routine reports. Once the level and circumstances of under-reporting is assessed, recommendations can be made on how to improve gaps to ensure more complete reporting (see HIS/Health Facility Records)
All deaths of women aged 15-49 are identified through review of institutional records, mainly registers.
Ascertainment of maternal/pregnancy-related status
Where pregnancy status is not clear in the register, evidence is sought from individual medical records.
Advantages:
- identifies pregnancy-related deaths missed by routine hospital reports
- identifies weaknesses in institutional reporting systems and areas for improvement
Limitations:
- women who die in health facilities are often not representative of all women in a population
- because RAPID only captures deaths which take place in health facilities, it cannot be used to generate a maternal mortality estimate unless the vast majority of deaths are in facilities
- it may however be possible to generate population-based estimates of maternal mortality using information from RAPID, in combination with estimates of the proportion of maternal deaths occurring in facilities from other sources, where these are available (see RAMOS)
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