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Availability, Utilisation and Quality of Basic and Comprehensive Emergency Obstetric Care Services in Malawi

Hofman, Jan, Kongnyuy, Eugene J., Mlava, G., Mhango, C. and Van Den Broek, Nynke ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8523-2684 (2009) 'Availability, Utilisation and Quality of Basic and Comprehensive Emergency Obstetric Care Services in Malawi'. Maternal and Child Health Journal, Vol 13, Issue 5, pp. 687-694.

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Abstract

Objective To establish a baseline for the availability, utilisation and quality of maternal and neonatal health care services for monitoring and evaluation of a maternal and neonatal morbidity/mortality reduction programme in three districts in the Central Region of Malawi. Methods Survey of all the 73 health facilities (13 hospitals and 60 health centres) that provide maternity services in the three districts (population, 2,812,183). Results There were 1.6 comprehensive emergency obstetric care (CEmOC) facilities per 500,000 population and 0.8 basic emergency obstetric care (BEmOC) facilities per 125,000 population. About 23% of deliveries were conducted in emergency obstetric care (EmOC) facilities and the met need for emergency obstetric complications was 20.7%. The case fatality rate for emergency obstetric complications treated in health facilities was 2.0%. Up to 86.7% of pregnant women attended antenatal clinic at least once and only 12.0% of them attend postnatal clinic at least once. There is a shortage of qualified staff and unequal distribution with more staff in hospitals leaving health centres severely understaffed. Conclusions The total number of CEmOC facilities is adequate but the distribution is unequal, leaving some rural areas with poor access to CEmOC services. There are no functional BEmOC facilities in the three districts. In order to reduce maternal mortality in Malawi and countries with similar socio-economic profile, there is a need to upgrade some health facilities to at least BEmOC level by training staff and providing equipment and supplies.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: Kongnyuy, Eugene J. Hofman, Jan Mlava, Grace Mhango, Chisale van den Broek, Nynke
Uncontrolled Keywords: Emergency obstetric care Maternal and neonatal health care Quality of care UN process indicators Malawi
Subjects: WA Public Health > WA 30 Socioeconomic factors in public health (General)
WQ Obstetrics > Pregnancy Complications > WQ 240 Pregnancy complications (General)
WQ Obstetrics > WQ 100 General works
WA Public Health > Health Problems of Special Population Groups > WA 395 Health in developing countries
WQ Obstetrics > WQ 20 Research (General)
WQ Obstetrics > Labor > WQ 330 Complications of labor
WQ Obstetrics > Labor > WQ 300 General works
WA Public Health > Health Administration and Organization > WA 525 General works
WQ Obstetrics > Obstetric Surgical Procedures > WQ 400 General works
Faculty: Department: Groups (2002 - 2012) > Child & Reproductive Health Group
Digital Object Identifer (DOI): https://doi.org/10.1007/s10995-008-0380-y
Depositing User: Users 19 not found.
Date Deposited: 27 May 2010 13:05
Last Modified: 17 Jul 2020 10:58
URI: https://archive.lstmed.ac.uk/id/eprint/304

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