SECTION 4: Antenatal Care
Antenatal care is the health care that a woman receives before her baby is born, or care
provided for women during the period between conception and birth of the baby. Focused Antenatal Care is the planning and providing of care during pregnancy. [A Maternal and Neonatal Health Program Best
Practice (December 2001)]

Antenatal care, care a woman receives throughout her pregnancy, is important in helping to ensure that women and newborns survive pregnancy and childbirth. The traditional approach to antenatal care, based on European models developed in the early 1900s, assumes that more is better in care for pregnant women. The model believes that frequent, routine visits are the norm, and women are classified by risk category to determine their chances of complications and the level of care they need. Many developing countries had adopted this approach without adjusting the interventions to meet the needs of their particular populations, taking into account the available resources or evaluating the scientific basis for specific practices.

The Maternal and Neonatal Health (MNH) Program, promotes an updated approach to antenatal care that emphasizes quality over quantity. The approach, focused antenatal care (FANC), recognizes two key realities. First, frequent visits do not necessarily improve pregnancy outcomes, and in developing countries they are often logistically and financially impossible for women. Secondly, many women who have risk factors never develop complications, while women without risk factors often do. So, when antenatal care is planned using a risk approach, scarce healthcare resources may be devoted to unnecessary care for "high-risk" women who never develop complications, and "low-risk" women may be unprepared to recognize or respond to signs of complications. Following the World Health Organization's lead, the MNH Program takes the view that every pregnant woman is at risk for complications and that all women should therefore receive the same basic care and monitoring for complications. The Program does not recommend relying on certain measures and risk indicators that are routine in traditional antenatal care (such as height, ankle edema and fetal position before 36 weeks), because they have not been proven to be effective in improving pregnancy outcomes.