The report contains data from the recently established Maternity and Newborn Information System (MNIS), the primary purpose of which is to provide information on maternity services. The MNIS currently contains extracts of hospital data from the National Minimum Dataset (NMDS) and data from payment claims submitted to HealthPAC.

In New Zealand in 2002, 53,037 mothers gave birth and 53,589 babies were born in hospital.

	No.	%
Mothers	53,037
Liveborn babies	53,589
Perinatal deaths:
Stillbirths	401	0.7
In-hospital neonatal deaths	187	0.3
Type of birth:
Normal births	35,909	67.7
Caesarean sections	12,0531	22.7
Operative births	5075	9.6

While the MNIS can provide answers to a wide range of queries, the quality of data submitted to NZHIS can affect the robustness of the analyses. Addressing data quality issues will increase confidence in any analysis based on data held in the MNIS. The 2002 report on maternity should therefore be considered another step in production of reliable information for mothers, medical practitioners, healthcare providers, policy makers and funders of maternity services in New Zealand.