Social autopsy for maternal and perinatal deaths in Bangladesh: a tool for community dialog and decision making

Bangladesh has an established comprehensive death review system for tracking and reviewing maternal and perinatal deaths. This death review system, established in 2010, was initially known as the “Maternal and Perinatal Death Review (MPDR) System.” One of the key interventions of the MPDR system, social autopsy (SA), is generally undertaken following a maternal or perinatal death notification. Social autopsy is managed at the community level by government field health workers. The main purpose of SA is to enable community discussion and create awareness of the preventable causes of maternal or neonatal deaths. Through these conversations, it is hoped to reduce future maternal and neonatal deaths. During the scaling up of the system in Bangladesh in 2016, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoH&FW) included social autopsy as a useful intervention in reviewing death at the community level and named it “Maternal and Perinatal Death Surveillance and Response” (MPDSR). The new MPDSR tool is currently being administered for the the 2017 to 2021 period under the National Health and Nutrition Population Sector Program (HPNSP). This paper seeks to review the experiences of the social autopsy tool, from the initial MPDR system to the current MPDSR system and its role in reducing maternal and neonatal deaths in Bangladesh.