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Background: Approximately 303,000 women die annually while giving birth, worldwide, and more than 99% of the deaths occur in developing countries. In Zambia, a developing country situated in sub-Saharan Africa, most of the maternal mortalities occur during the intrapartum and immediate postpartum periods, arising from postpartum hemorrhage, sepsis, obstructed labor, and hypertensive disorders. Aim: The aim of this study was to assess the quality of intrapartum services provided in health facilities in the country. Methodology: Guided by a descriptive cross sectional design, data were collected from 264 women in labor using a World Health Organization validated observation checklist. Convenience sampling was used to recruit the women, while multistage sampling was used to select four health facilities. The Social Package for Social Sciences, version 23 was used to analyze the data. Results: One health facility met the World Health Organization 80% minimum standard in four out of the five categories used to measure quality in intrapartum care, while the other three met the minimum standard in one category each. Conclusion: Low numbers of midwives, inadequate supplies and equipment were major obstacles to following national and international agreed standards for providing optimal care during intrapartum period. Recommendations: There is need for local and national stakeholders in Zambia to urgently address the structural barriers that were observed, as well as invest in sufficient How to cite this paper:

Antenatal care (ANC) has been recommended as a service that can reduce both maternal and newborn mortalities. However, even in areas recording high ANC attendance, there are unevenly high levels of maternal and new born mortalities. Evidence of a weak relationship between ANC use and maternal and newborn survival has motivated recent calls to focus on content and quality of care provided rather than mere ANC attendance. This was a descriptive cross sectional study which was designed to evaluate the quality of antenatal care services in two health facilities in Lusaka and two in Mumbwa districts of Zambia. The health facilities were selected purposively based on poor maternal outcomes such as high maternal mortality ratio. Women attending antenatal clinics were selected using simple random sampling. Data was collected using a client exist interview schedule designed by World Health Organization for assessing quality of antenatal care. Data was analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Scientist (SPSS) version 24.0. The study revealed a lot of variations in the care provided at the four sites. None of the women had all the blood tests for haemoglobin, grouping and X-match, HIV and syphilis conducted from three out of the four health facilities, while at the fourth, only 30% of women had all the blood tests conducted. Furthermore, less than 20% of women had a full head to toe examination. While less than 10% of women from each of the facility reported that the health providers met the requirements for provision of privacy. Despite not meeting the minimum standards of care, only less than 5% of women categorized the care as poor. All the four health facilities recorded low quality of care on all domains of antenatal care. Therefore, if antenatal care has to achieve its intended purpose of reducing adverse maternal and new born outcomes, then quality of care delivered during pregnancy should be the focus as opposed mere attendance.

Background: Learning styles are inherent personal attributes that determine the preferred teaching and learning method(s) for individual while an intelligence type is an individual's levels of aptitude in various content areas as there is no one individual who is universally intelligent. An understanding of the two concepts is essential for designing suitable teaching approaches. Methods: This was a descriptive correlation study which explored the relationship between two variables; learning styles and intelligence types and academic performance of nursing students enrolled in the conventional nursing program at the University of Zambia. Data on learning styles was collected using the Visual, Auditory, Reading/Writing and Kinesthetic (VARK) questionnaire version 7.8 as proposed by Neil Fleming while Gardner's questionnaire for assessing multiple intelligences was used to collect data on the students' intelligence types. Results for the end of 2015/2016 academic year were used to determine academic performance. Results: Almost two thirds 64 (65.4%) of the participants' academic performance was at credit level, 32 (32.7%) were at pass while only 2 (2%) were meritorious students. Participants had wide-ranging learning styles from unimodal, to bimodal and tri modal styles, although the majority were unimodal learners 81 (82.6%). Among the unimodal learners, majority 35 (35.5%) were kinaesthetic. On the other hand, 37 (37.8%) had logical mathematical intelligence, followed by bodily-Kinaesthetic 27 (27.6%). Both learning styles and intelligence types showed negative correlation and no significant association with academic performance. The Pearson r correlation and level of significance between learning styles and academic performance was -.092 and 0.372 respectively, while that for intelligence types and academic performance were -.027 and 0.790. Of the three demographic variables of age, gender and year of study, only age showed a positive correlation and significant association with academic performance (p = .002, and r = .144). Conclusions: The negative correlation between learning styles and intelligence types and academic performance may be an indication that the teaching methods utilized for nursing students are varied and therefore capable of promoting learning across different styles and intelligence types without necessarily favouring a specific style or type or that there is simply no association between learning styles and intelligence types and academic performance.

This study aims to determine health-related quality of life (HRQOL) of breast cancer patients with unilateral arm lymphedema one year after completion of treatment at Cancer Diseases Hospital. The study design comprises of a cross sectional study, where we assessed the HRQoL controlling for patient demographics, cancer stages and treatment types. Short form of 36 interview schedule was used to assess HRQol and to determine relationships among HRQoL components. The physical and functional well-being was significantly associated with lymphedema. Patients with moderate lymphedema were 10 times more likely to have physical impairment and 3 times more likely to have mild functionality impairment compared to patients with mild lymphedema. While patients with severe lymphedema were 25 times more likely to have mild functionality impairment compared to patients with mild lymphedema. The study showed that the physical and functional well-being were significantly affected by the presence of lymphedema after breast cancer treatment, lymphedema has an impact on long-term health related quality of life in survivors of breast cancer and its effects should not be underestimated.