Achieving excellence in maternal, neonatal and perinatal survival:Executive synopsis of pearl study annual report 2011

PEARL Study (Perinatal Neonatal Outcomes Research Study in the Arabian Gulf) is Qatar's prospective National Perinatal Epidemiologic Study funded by QNRF (Qatar National Research Fund-grant # QNRF--NPRP-09-390-3-097). The study is a joint collaborative research project between Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC), Doha, Qatar and the University of Gloucestershire, Gloucester, United Kingdom. The project aims at building a National Neonatal Perinatal Registry for Qatar called Q-Peri-Reg which will be used to quantify Maternal, Neonatal and Perinatal mortality and morbidities and their correlates. The study is approved by the Research Ethics Committee (IRB) of Hamad Medical Corporation (protocol #9211/09), which is responsible for providing ethical approval to all health care research projects in the State of Qatar. An executive synopsis of PEARL study for the State of Qatar on achieving excellence in maternal, neonatal and perinatal survival is reported here for guiding the practitioners and researchers in their relevant specialties. This describes these outcomes during 2011 and their trends since 1975 and shows that these outcomes in Qatar are comparable to many high income countries.