Context

Almost 3 million babies are born with no signs of life worldwide every year.1 To contribute to the increasing awareness of stillbirth prevention in the global health agenda, The Lancet has recently published the ‘Stillbirth Series’.2 This set of original articles and commentaries is an excellent summary of what is currently known about this problem, mainly from a public health perspective, but is also useful for clinical care.

Although 98% of stillbirths occur in low- and middle-income countries, they also occur in high-income countries in approximately 1 out of every 300 births, and many are preventable.2 In one of the series articles, Flenady and colleagues have conducted a systematic review addressing the risk factors for stillbirths in high-income countries.