RESUMO
Background: In Vietnam, although there were interventions in perinatal and neonatal care services, the neonatal mortality reduced slowly, accounting for >50% of under-5-year-old mortality rate and >70% of under-1-year-old mortality rate. \r\n', u'Objectives: Discover the status of prenatal, perinatal, and postnatal care services, and analyze the relationships between healthcare services and neonatal mortality in Quang Ninh province. Subjects and method: Information on births and neonatal deaths between January and December 2005 in Quang Ninh province was collected. The perinatal care services including antenatal, delivery and post partum cares were described. The relationship between neonatal deaths and places of delivery was analyzed in order to uncover the risk of death in newborns delivered at home. Results: 76% of pregnant women received 3 or more antenatal care visits. More than 90% of deliveries took place at health facilities, of them, 16% occurred in community health stations. Only 49% of mothers received post partum care visits, with 82% of them received the visits in the first week after delivery. There were 17,519 births and 284 neonatal deaths in 2005. The neonatal mortality rate was lowest in cases born in community health stations (7.5/1.000) and highest in home birth cases (39/1.000). Conclusion: Further improvement in safe motherhood and neonatal survival can be achieved by increasing the accessibility of women to perinatal cares during pregnancy, delivery. \r\n', u'