The occurrence of any delay was associated with increasing severity of maternal outcome: 52% in PLTC, 68.4% in MNM and 84.1% in MD. Overall, any type of delay was observed in 53.8% of cases delay related to user factors was observed in 10.2%, 34.6% of delays were related to health service accessibility and 25.7% were related to quality of medical care. ResultsĪ total of 82,144 live births were screened, with 9,555 PLTC, MNM or MD cases prospectively identified. For factors associated with any delay, the PR and 95%CI controlled for cluster design were estimated. The prevalence of the three different types of delays was estimated according to the level of care and outcome of the complication. Data on delays were collected by medical chart review and interview with the medical staff. All women admitted to the hospital with a pregnancy-related cause were screened, searching for potentially life-threatening conditions (PLTC), maternal death (MD) and maternal near-miss (MNM) cases, according to the WHO criteria. This was a multicentre cross-sectional study, involving 27 referral obstetric facilities in all Brazilian regions between 20. The objective of this study was to explore the association between delay in providing obstetric health care and severe maternal morbidity/death. Delay in obtaining access to appropriate health care is a fairly common problem which can be improved. The vast majority of maternal deaths in low-and middle-income countries are preventable.