Patna: Strengthening antenatal care, ensuring timely referral of high-risk pregnancies and improving care during childbirth are crucial to reducing stillbirths, health experts said at a regional workshop organised in Patna on Wednesday.The two-day workshop, jointly organised by the Union ministry of health and family welfare (MoHFW), Bihar health department and Unicef, aims to strengthen stillbirth surveillance in public health facilities across the state. The programme focuses on improving the identification, reporting, classification and review of stillbirths and ensuring that findings are translated into corrective action at the grassroots level.Experts noted that stillbirths remain an under-recognised public health challenge in India, with gaps in reporting and review systems often making it difficult to identify preventable causes. In Bihar, where a large number of pregnancies and births take place every year, stronger surveillance mechanisms can help detect shortcomings in antenatal, referral and delivery services and improve the quality of maternal and newborn care.Addressing the workshop, health department secretary Kumar Ravi said stillbirth was an important but often overlooked public health issue. He stressed the need to understand preventable causes and strengthen efforts to reduce such deaths.Ravi said the training would equip master trainers to build the capacity of health workers at district and community levels and improve stillbirth surveillance and review mechanisms. “The findings from these reviews should be used to improve care and prevent avoidable stillbirths,” he said.He urged participants to take the learning back to their districts and ensure it reaches frontline health workers, including auxiliary nurse midwives (ANMs) and accredited social health activists (ASHAs). Stronger surveillance, he added, would help the health system identify gaps in care and initiate timely corrective measures.Joining the workshop virtually, Dr Shobhana Gupta, deputy commissioner and in-charge of child health and RBSK at MoHFW, said stillbirth surveillance should go beyond counting cases and help understand the multiple factors contributing to such deaths. She emphasised that the review process should strengthen the health system rather than become an exercise in assigning blame.Around 50-60 officials, programme managers, doctors, medical college faculty members and public health specialists participated in the workshop. Technical sessions covered national guidelines, standard definitions, stillbirth and perinatal mortality calculations, case identification, and cause assignment using the ICD-PM classification system.
