Pregnancy registration is important for improving estimates of maternal and perinatal mortality since outcomes can be deliberately followed.

Pregnancy registration and monitoring has become an important aspect of demographic data collection in most DSS sites. Monitoring pregnancy helps in the early registration of births but most importantly in capturing stillbirths, abortions and neonatal deaths. Pregnancy monitoring starts with the registration of the pregnancy, which is one of the key events collected in most of the DSS sites. This is done during the routine visits of the field workers (FWs), where they ask their respondents if any woman has been pregnant in the household since the last visit. If there is a pregnant woman in the household, she is interviewed and information about the pregnancy is collected. These include estimated date of conception (number of months of pregnancy), whether that pregnancy is her first, ever receive TT injection, etc (attached is a Sample Pregnancy Registration Form). Remember that so long as a woman is registered into the system, her demographic information is available and that needs not to be collected. FWs are asked to register only obvious pregnancies. Apart the FWs, Community Key Informants (CKIs) also are tasked to register pregnancies that occur in their respective communities.

When these pregnancies are registered, data entry takes place and lists of all pregnant women by clusters are produced. FWs move with these lists during their normal rounds and for each household where there is a pregnant woman on the list, the FWs ask to know the state or outcome of the pregnancy. Depending on the outcome of the pregnancy as seen at an update round, a pregnancy outcome form is filled  (Sample Pregnancy Outcome Form.pdf) Where the outcome is a live birth, it is registered and also the birth registration form is filled. (Sample DSS Birth Registration Form.pdf).  Also, when a woman is still pregnant it is indicated and her name reappears on the list for the next round visit, unlike the other outcomes where the woman’s name is taken off the list since there is no longer a pregnancy to monitor. Monitoring and registration of pregnancies goes on concurrently. As those whose pregnancies have terminated and names taken off from the lists, new pregnancies registered and are put on the list for monitoring during subsequent rounds.   

In the Rakai DSS, there is a module associated with the Pregnancy Registration Form asking the female respondent about her pregnancy status and offering a pregnancy test for any woman who is uncertain/unsure of pregnancy status and fulfills the following:

A pregnancy test is not needed for:

See also: Sample DSS Birth Registration Form.pdf