Strengths of community and health facilities based interventions in improving women and adolescents' care seeking behaviors as approaches for reducing maternal mortality and improving birth outcome among low income communities of Egypt

Provision of emergency obstetric care is considered the key for maternal mortality reduction worldwide. This study evaluated the impact of community- and facility-based educational programs on provision of emergency obstetric care in Egypt. The study focused on evaluating utilization of the availabl...

Full description

Saved in:

Bibliographic Details
Published in:	BMC health services research Vol. 20; no. 1; p. 592
Main Authors:	Metwally, Ammal M, Abdel-Latif, Ghada A, Mohsen, Amira, El Etreby, Lobna, Elmosalami, Dalia M, Saleh, Rehan M, El-Sonbaty, Marwa M, Amer, Hala A, El Deeb, Sherif E, Fathy, Asmaa M, Hanna, Carine, Azmy, Osama, Taha, Tamer F, Abbassy, Amr, Alalfy, Mahmoud, Hasan, Hatem Mohamed, Abdelrahman, Mohamed
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	England BioMed Central Ltd 29-06-2020 BioMed Central BMC
Subjects:	Adolescent Adult Behavior Breastfeeding & lactation Childbirth & labor Childrens health Delivery, Obstetric - statistics & numerical data Education Educational interventions - care seeking behaviors Egypt - epidemiology Emergency medical care Emergency Medical Services - statistics & numerical data Emergency obstetric care- adolescent pregnancy- maternal mortality and birth outcome Empowerment Female First aid Health aspects Health Education - organization & administration Health facilities Health services Health Services Research Humans Infant mortality Intervention Low income groups Maternal & child health Maternal mortality Maternal Mortality - trends Nurses Obstetrics Patient Acceptance of Health Care - statistics & numerical data Postpartum period Poverty Areas Pregnancy Pregnancy in Adolescence Pregnancy Outcome - epidemiology Rural health Teenage pregnancy Teenagers Women Womens health Youth Egypt Educational interventions - care seeking behaviors Emergency obstetric care- adolescent pregnancy- maternal mortality and birth outcome
Online Access:	Get full text
Tags:	Add Tag No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!

Description
Summary:	Provision of emergency obstetric care is considered the key for maternal mortality reduction worldwide. This study evaluated the impact of community- and facility-based educational programs on provision of emergency obstetric care in Egypt. The study focused on evaluating utilization of the available health services and care seeking behaviors of mothers in the childbearing period. We implemented a package of community- and facility-focused educational interventions in two of Egypt's lowest income governorates. At facility level, health professionals at rural health units from 21 villages over 5 years were trained. Mass media gathering, individual teaching at health facilities, printed materials and home-based care sessions were provided. Collectively, these interventions were designed to focusing on recognition of the early warning signs during pregnancy, delivery and postpartum period for timely referral to hospitals for 20,494 women and adolescents mothers. The impact of the interventions was highly reflected on the percent of mothers received care during their pregnancy period. Proper antenatal care at governmental or private health facilities was raised dramatically from 0.6 to 59.3% and those who utilized at least one family planning method from 61.4 to 74.4%. Accordingly, the rate of complications significantly reduced during pregnancy (38.1 to 15.1%), during delivery (24.1 to 13.1%) and during postpartum (81.7 to 7.0%). As an impact to the improvement, there was a marked reduction in adolescent pregnancy by 55% and better birth outcome with a reduction in the percent of stillbirth by 11.5%. It is important to provide a comprehensive package that works at both improving qualities of care as well as empowering women by knowledge to first aid measures at the community level. The cost-effective way to empower mothers to provide first aid measures as emergency obstetric care is to adopt the outreach approach which could be more influential than mass media campaigns for the at-risk and vulnerable and low-income communities.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23
ISSN:	1472-6963 1472-6963
DOI:	10.1186/s12913-020-05412-1