During the last decades there was a huge decrease of maternal mortality in developed countries, while in developing countries the decrease was small or did not happen at all. Nevertheless, because maternal death is less common in absolute frequency, severe maternal morbid events became the focus of attention because these are "lookout events" preceding death. In Brazil, the main source for health information is the Ministry of Health, through its system called DATASUS. The use of this available routine information by several public health information systems could be useful not only to determine severe maternal morbidity and mortality, but also for prospective and continuous monitoring. This could potentially create a surveillance system allowing, when activated, the implementation of preventive and/or therapeutic interventions to avoid maternal death. It could be an innovative and challenging method to be tested in a near future.
Morbidity; Maternal mortality; Information systems