Title: The role of health extension workers in improving utilization of maternal health services in rural areas in Ethiopia: a cross sectional study

BACKGROUND Improving the health and well-being of women and children has long been a common goal throughout the world. From 2005 to 2011, Suizhou City had an annual average of 22,405 pregnant and parturient women (1.04% of the population) and 98,811 children under 5 years old (4.57% of the population). Understanding the status of maternal and child health care in Suizhou City during such period...

OBJECTIVE To determine associations in health status and health care utilization between mothers and their children. METHODS Cross-sectional analysis of the 1996-97 Community Tracking Study Household Survey. Separate logistic regression models describing each type of service use were conducted and adjusted for child age, health status, mother age, race, education, and respondent type. Models ...

BACKGROUND After more than two decades of the Safe Motherhood Initiative and Millennium Development Goals aimed at reducing maternal mortality, women continue to die in childbirth at unacceptably high rates in Pakistan. While an extensive literature describes various programmatic strategies, it neglects the rigorous analysis of the reasons these strategies have been unsuccessful, especially for...

S outh Africa is performing well on certain selected maternal health process indicators; antenatal care attendance has remained over 90% since 1998; deliveries conducted by skilled health workers have increased from 84% in 1998 to 92% in 2003. Despite this, maternal mortality is on the increase, with the latest Saving Mothers Report showing that maternal mortality in the 2002-2004 triennium inc...

Despite World Health Organization recommendations that all women deliver with a skilled birth attendant (SBA), research continues to demonstrate large disparities in use of SBAs by socioeconomic status (SES). Yet few quantitative studies empirically examine the factors underlying these disparities, due in part to the fact that current models do not provide clear pathways-with measurable mediato...

High maternal morbidity and mortality in many developing countries are highly associated with poor access to and quality of health care. Here we review the economic feasibility of the WHO's mother-baby package as a means of reducing maternal and neonatal mortality and morbidity in Tanzania. This paper examines the costs of maternal health care in Tanzania, and how much can we expect households ...

The Standards-Based Management and Recognition (SBM-R(®)) approach to quality improvement was applied to maternal and newborn health services in Guinea, Mozambique, Nigeria and Zimbabwe. In every country, the quality of service delivery, as measured by clinical performance standards, improved following the intervention. The performance of evidence-based service delivery practices, as measured t...

This paper examines how organization and financing of maternal health services influence health-seeking behavior in Bosomtwe district, Ghana. It contributes in furthering the discussions on maternal health-seeking behavior and health outcomes from a health system perspective in sub-Saharan Africa. From a health system standpoint, the paper first presents the resources, organization and financin...

background recent british national health service (nhs) reforms, in response to austerity and alleged ‘health tourism,’ could impose additional barriers to healthcare access for non-european economic area (eea) migrants. this study explores policy reform challenges and implications, using excerpts from the perspectives of non-eea migrants and health advocates in london.   methods a qualitative ...