On October 5 2025 the World Health Organization, the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics, and the International Confederation of Midwives launched a consolidated guideline for the prevention, detection, and treatment of postpartum haemorrhage (PPH) on the first World PPH Day. The guideline brings together 51 evidence-based recommendations, combining both new and existing guidance to improve global PPH care and outcomes.
I’m a Consultant Systematic Reviewer at Covidence. For me this launch was exciting, significant, and inspiring. The guideline is the product of a huge global effort to improve women’s lives that I am proud to have contributed to on behalf of Covidence.
Why PPH matters
PPH is excessive bleeding after childbirth. It is one of the leading causes of maternal death worldwide, accounting for nearly one-quarter of all maternal deaths. Most of these deaths are preventable with timely recognition and proper management. The publication of the guideline is a timely and positive step, offering clear, evidence-based guidance for the early detection and management. The new PPH guideline introduces earlier intervention at 300 mL of blood loss with abnormal vital signs, promotes accurate measurement using calibrated drapes, and consolidates previous guidance into a single framework based on the largest global dataset. The guideline represents a renewed global effort to reduce preventable maternal deaths and promote equitable, high-quality care.
Guidelines and global health
Guidelines transform systematic reviews of the best available evidence into practical, evidence-based recommendations. They play a vital role in global health by standardizing care, improving quality and consistency, and ensuring decisions are based on reliable data. A lack of up-to-date guidance can delay the adoption of life-saving interventions, weaken policy responses, and hinder progress toward international health goals.
Covidence’s contribution
To produce the guidelines, the World Health Organization commissioned and supported the updating and publication of several systematic reviews in the Cochrane Library.
Cochrane reviews on PPH provided essential evidence that informed the development of the new guideline. Recognized globally for their methodological rigour and reliability, Cochrane reviews contributed critical insights on key interventions, including the use of uterotonic agents for prevention, methods for assessing blood loss, and strategies for implementing PPH management, helping to ensure that the guideline is grounded in the highest quality evidence available. This integration of Cochrane evidence supports the guideline’s aim to standardize PPH prevention, diagnosis, and treatment worldwide, ultimately improving maternal outcomes and reducing many preventable deaths.
Covidence, a non-profit organization, offers a dedicated support service to assist Cochrane’s high-priority review teams through a streamlined, concierge-style workflow. Dedicated to enhancing the production of systematic reviews, Covidence’s mission is to transform the way the world creates and uses trustworthy knowledge.
Several of the Cochrane reviews that Covidence supported in this way have directly contributed to the WHO guidelines on PPH. My role was to work with the author teams and help them get maximum value from Covidence in managing studies, setting up data extraction templates, and collecting data efficiently. This support contributed to the timely production of the evidence.
Recent enhancements to Covidence’s Extraction 1 tool and its RevMan export functionality, have greatly supported research teams to manage their data efficiently. For the Cochrane author teams, these improvements enabled fast and accurate data transfer, helping produce high-quality, reliable evidence that informed this global guideline.
Real-world outcomes
My involvement in this work taught me how detailed and collaborative the process of producing high-quality evidence can be, especially when multiple teams work together. I saw how advancements in data extraction and management directly enhance the reliability and timeliness of global recommendations. I learned that review teams greatly value intuitive, efficient tools that reduce manual work and minimize errors during data extraction and analysis. Clear onboarding and training are essential to help reviewers use the platform confidently. It was a pleasure collaborating with different review teams.
Finally, I realized how powerful it is to connect our work to real-world outcomes. Sharing Covidence’s contribution to this work inspired my colleagues to share their own experiences of PPH and made tangible the impact of this work on all our lives.
Measuring Impact
The impact of the new guideline will be measured through improvements in maternal health outcomes, particularly reductions in postpartum haemorrhage-related deaths and complications. Monitoring will include how widely the recommendations are adopted across countries, integrated into national clinical protocols, and supported through training and implementation programmes. Ongoing evaluation by the World Health Organization and its partners will help track progress and ensure the recommendations achieve measurable, real-world impact.
Covidence will continue to enhance extraction tools and strengthen integration with RevMan to improve accuracy, efficiency, and usability for global review teams. By providing dedicated support through services like Cochrane Premium Support, Covidence remains committed to helping researchers produce accurate and trusted analyses that inform major health policies and global guidelines.
To learn more about Covidence, visit www.covidence.org, where you can start your review journey for free and invite collaborators from around the world to work together on your review project. Covidence enables teams to collaborate seamlessly on multiple tasks in one place, saving time and helping produce high-quality evidence faster.
