Short message service communication improves exclusive breastfeeding and early postpartum contraception in a low- to middle-income country setting: a randomised trial
Objective: To assess the effect of short message service (SMS) communication on facility delivery, exclusive breastfeeding (EBF), and contraceptive use. Design: Mobile WACh was a three-arm unblinded individually randomised controlled trial. Setting: A public sector maternal child health (MCH) clinic in Nairobi, Kenya. Population: Three hundred women attending antenatal care were randomised, 100 to each […]
Can a community-based maternal care package in rural Ethiopia increase the use of health facilities for childbirth and reduce the stillbirth rate?
Objective: To measure the impact of a maternal health package on health facility delivery and stillbirth rates. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study in Ethiopia where a maternal package was integrated into eight health centers across three regions. The package included trained midwives with a mentoring program, transport for referral, and equipment and accommodation for […]
Maternal mental health in primary care in five low- and middle-income countries: A situational analysis
Background: The integration of maternal mental health into primary health care has been advocated to reduce the mental health treatment gap in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). This study reports findings of a cross-country situation analysis on maternal mental health and services available in five LMICs, to inform the development of integrated maternal mental health […]
A Qualitative study of language barriers between South African health care providers and cross-border migrants
Background: Communication with health care providers represents an essential part of access to health care for the over 230 million cross-border migrants around the world. In this article, we explore the complexity of health communication from the perspective of cross-border migrants seeking antenatal care in Cape Town, South Africa in order to highlight the importance […]
Piecing Together the Maternal Death Puzzle through Narratives: The Three Delays Model Revisited
Background: In Malawi maternal mortality continues to be a major public health challenge. Going beyond the numbers to form a more complete view of why women die is critical to improving access to and quality of emergency obstetric care. The objective of the current study was to identify the socio-cultural and facility-based factors that contributed […]
Quality of maternal and newborn health care in Ethiopia: a cross-sectional study
Background: Despite reports of universal access to and modest utilization of maternal and newborn health services in Ethiopia, mothers and newborns continue to die from preventable causes. Studies indicate this could be due to poor quality of care provided in health systems. Evidences show that high quality health care prevents more than half of all […]
Risk factors for maternal mortality in rural tigray, northern Ethiopia: A case-control study
Background Maternal mortality continues to have devastating impacts in many societies, where it constitutes a leading cause of death, and thus remains a core issue in international development. Nevertheless, individual determinants of maternal mortality are often unclear and subject to local variation. This study aims to characterise individual risk factors for maternal mortality in Tigray, […]
Does knowledge on socio-cultural factors associated with maternal mortality affect maternal health decisions? A cross-sectional study of the Greater Accra region of Ghana
Background: The concern of all maternal health stakeholders is to improve maternal health and reduce maternal deaths to the barest minimum. This remains elusive in low and middle-income countries as the majority of factors that drive maternal deaths stem from the socio-cultural environment especially in rural settings. This study was aimed at finding out if […]
Community health workers impact on maternal and child health outcomes in rural South Africa – a non-randomized two-group comparison study
Background: Home visits by paraprofessional community health workers (CHWs) has been shown to improve maternal and child health outcomes in research studies in many countries. Yet, when these are scaled or replicated, efficacy disappears. An effective CHW home visiting program in peri-urban Cape Town found maternal and child health benefits over the 5 years point […]
WHO 2010 guidelines for prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission in Zimbabwe: Modeling clinical outcomes in infants and mothers
Background: The Zimbabwean national prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission (PMTCT) program provided primarily single-dose nevirapine (sdNVP) from 2002-2009 and is currently replacing sdNVP with more effective antiretroviral (ARV) regimens. Methods: Published HIV and PMTCT models, with local trial and programmatic data, were used to simulate a cohort of HIV-infected, pregnant/breastfeeding women in Zimbabwe (mean age […]
