Integrating water treatment into antenatal care: Impact on use of maternal health services and household water treatment by mothers-rural Uganda, 2013
To increase maternal health service use and household water treatment (HWT), free water treatment kits were provided at first antenatal care (ANC) visits and free water treatment sachet refills were provided at follow-up ANC visits, delivery, and postnatal visits in 46 health facilities in rural Uganda. We evaluated the impact by surveying 226 women in […]
Illness recognition and appropriate care seeking for newborn complications in rural Oromia and Amhara regional states of Ethiopia
Background: Ethiopia has made significant progress in reducing child mortality but newborn mortality has stagnated at around 29 deaths per 1000 births. The Maternal Health in Ethiopia Partnership (MaNHEP) was a 3.5-year implementation project aimed at developing a community-oriented model of maternal and newborn health in rural Ethiopia and to position it for scale up. […]
Effects of computerized decision support on maternal and neonatal health-worker performance in the context of combined implementation with performance-based incentivisation in Upper East Region, Ghana: a qualitative study of professional perspectives
Background: Computerized decision support systems (CDSS) and performance-based incentives (PBIs) can improve health-worker performance. However, there is minimal evidence on the combined effects of these interventions or perceived effects among maternal and child healthcare providers in low-resource settings. We thus aimed to explore the perceptions of maternal and child healthcare providers of CDSS support in […]
Individual-level and community-level factors associated with eight or more antenatal care contacts in sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from 36 sub-Saharan African countries
Objective To reduce maternal mortality, the WHO has been introducing several antenatal care (ANC) measures. Pregnancy-related preventable morbidity and mortality, on the other hand, remain alarmingly high. This study was conducted to estimate the magnitude and the factors associated with eight or more ANC visits in sub-Saharan Africa. Design A population-based, cross-sectional investigation was conducted. […]
Clients’ perceptions of the quality of post-abortion care in eight health facilities in Dakar, Senegal
Post-abortion care (PAC) integrates elements that are vital for women’s survival after abortion complications and their ability to meet their subsequent fertility intentions. Currently, the utilization of PAC among women in need remains too low, particularly in settings where unsafe abortion is an appreciable cause of maternal mortality. Interventions have aimed at addressing unmet need; […]
Parental awareness of hearing impairment in their school-going children and healthcare seeking behaviour in Kisumu district, Kenya
Background: Hearing-impaired children who are identified early and appropriately managed have improved outcomes in speech, language, cognitive and social development. Enhanced parental awareness of their child’s hearing disability, behavioral, developmental and psychosocial limitations is essential to sustaining timely detection and appropriate intervention. Additionally, availability of services for diagnosis, treatment and habilitation would improve the demand […]
A lost cause? Extending verbal autopsy to investigate biomedical and socio-cultural causes of maternal death in Burkina Faso and Indonesia
Maternal mortality in developing countries is characterised by disadvantage and exclusion. Women who die whilst pregnant are typically poor and live in low-income and rural settings where access to quality care is constrained and where deaths, within and outside hospitals, often go unrecorded and unexamined. Verbal autopsy (VA) is an established method of determining cause(s) […]
Using quality improvement methods to test and scale up a new national policy on early post-natal care in Ghana
Introduction The first week of life presents the greatest risk of dying for a young infant. Yet, due to the sociocultural, financial, geographical and health system barriers found in many resource-poor settings, infants do not access health care until much later. To reduce neonatal mortality, the Ghana Health Service proposed a new policy that promotes […]
Using photovoice methods as a community-based participatory research tool to advance uptake of clean cooking and improve health: The LPG adoption in Cameroon evaluation studies
Each year up to 2.6 million people die prematurely from household air pollution (HAP) due to cooking with polluting fuels such as wood and charcoal, particularly in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). The World Health Organisation recommends scaling the adoption of clean fuels to improve maternal and child health. Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) represents a […]
Point-of-care testing and treatment of sexually transmitted infections to improve birth outcomes in high-burden, low-income settings: Study protocol for a cluster randomized crossover trial (the wantaim trial, papua new guinea) [version 2; peer review: 1 approved, 1 approved with reservations]
Background: Chlamydia trachomatis, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, Trichomonas vaginalis and bacterial vaginosis have been associated with preterm birth and low birth weight, and are highly prevalent among pregnant women in many low-and middle-income settings. There is conflicting evidence on the potential benefits of screening and treating these infections in pregnancy. Newly available diagnostic technologies make it possible, […]
