Results
CS rates were obtained for 137 countries from 192 United Nations member states of the world
[25], representing 95% of global births in the year 2008 [14]. In 133 countries the available CS
rates were considered national rates. For 4 low and middle income countries, national figures
were estimated from hospital rates adjusted as explained above (Web Table 1).
h a standardized mark-up applied to account for transportation
and distribution. [23] For goods available only locally (e.g. human resources, inpatient bed
days) costs have been shown to vary substantially across countries [22], so cross-country
regressions accounting for national income levels and local characteristics of the supply of
health care were used to generate estimates of unit costs.