Women’s Perspectives on Influencers to the Utilisation of Skilled Delivery Care: An Explorative Qualitative Study in North West Ethiopia

Abstract

Skilled attendance at birth is widely regarded as an effective intervention to reduce maternal and early neonatal morbidity and mortality. However, many women in Ethiopia still deliver without skilled assistance. is study was carried out to identify factors that influenced or motivated women to give birth in a health facility in their previous, current, and future pregnancies. is descriptive explorative qualitative study was conducted in two districts of West Gojjam zone in North West Ethiopia. Fourteen focus group discussions were conducted with pregnant women and women who gave birth within one year. An inductive thematic analysis approach was employed to analyze the qualitative data. In this study, two major themes and a number of subthemes emerged from the focus group discussions with the study participants. e factors that influenced or motivated women to give birth in health facility in their previous, current, and future pregnancies include access to ambulance transport service, prevention of mother to child HIV transmission service, referral service, women friendly service, and emergency obstetric services, good interpersonal care from health workers, and fear and experience of obstetric danger signs and complications. In addition, reception of information and advice on importance of skilled delivery care and obstetric danger signs and complications from health workers, use of antenatal care, previous use of skilled delivery care, ensuring wellbeing of parturient women and newborns, and use of emergency obstetric care were also identified as influencers and motivators for health facility childbirth in previous, current, and future deliveries. Increased understanding of the factors that influenced or motivated women to deliver in facilities could contribute to developing strategies to improve the uptake of facility-based maternity services and corresponding declines in maternal morbidity and mortality. 100,000 live births in 2016. However, this figure is still very high [2]. More than half of these maternal deaths worldwide were attributable to haemorrhage, hypertensive disorders, and sepsis followed by abortion, embolism, complication of anesthesia, and conditions of peripartum cardiomyopathy [3,4].Childbirth and its process are one of the most significant rites of passage to a woman [5]. e time of childbirth and immediately after birth is the most difficult period in a woman's life particularly in developing countries [6]. Improving access to and use of skilled attendants at birth in a setting with emergency obstetric care and a strong referral system is the single most effective intervention to substantially reduce maternal mortality ratio [7,8]. Although institutional delivery rate in Ethiopia has shown improvement between 2000 and 2016, the proportion of births attended by a skilled birth attendant was very low (26%) [2].

Sand Flies Control: A Review of the Knowledge of Health Professionals and the Local Community, Province of El Hajeb, Morocco

“…This could be explained by the importance given to Anopheles mosquito control activities in favor of the sand flies. Additionally, Anopheles mosquito control under the malaria control program was largely successful throughout the country, and since the elimination of malaria in 2012, surveillance of larvae has been intensified [29]. This finding is similar to that of a study conducted by Ruoti and colleagues [30].…”

“…The womenwere more numerous than men in health care institutions according to the latest statistics from the Ministry of Health [23]. They are also the most likely to be available in their homes according to Moroccan traditions [20] and are the most influential in the family in matters of health [29]. Indeed, according to the latest general population census of 2014, women represented more than half (50.5%) of the Moroccan population [20].…”

Why do women not use skilled birth attendance service? An explorative qualitative study in north West Ethiopia

“…This study was part of a bigger research project by the researchers (Biruhtesfa Bekele and LM Modiba) and details of the research methods have been published elsewhere [ 22 ].…”

Influence of information, education and communication on prenatal and skilled delivery in the Tano North District, Ghana: A cross-sectional study

“…It is, therefore, clear that information provided by nurses and other healthcare professionals during ANC visits is critical in educating and motivating pregnant women to seek health facility and skilled delivery. These findings, therefore, underscores the importance of ANC as an engine of IE&C as it has been argued that skilled attendance at birth is an effective intervention to reduce maternal and early neonatal morbidity and mortality ( Shiferaw and Modiba, 2020 ).…”