A community based surveillance system for perinatal and neonatal care.

The impact of maternal health services on perinatal and neonatal mortality depends on both the quantitative and qualitative coverage of pregnant women with obstetric services. In rural areas this becomes all the more difficult because of the requirement of a large decentralized infrastructure extending from village based health workers and subcentres to the Primary Health Centre and tertiary levels of referral. An effective introduction of socio-cultural, biomedical and managerial interventions is required to reduce perinatal and neonatal mortality. A community based surveillance and monitoring system is central to and facilitates the introduction of all other interventions. Finally, the system operated by grass-root level workers is a motivational tool for achieving expected levels of performance.