| dc.description.abstract | Background
Maternal health in Uganda remains a critical area of public health concern and a high MMR of 438 deaths per 100,000 live births, the MDG 5 seems far from being achieved. PNC which is one of the maternal health services offered from the first day of delivery up to six weeks is meant to benefit the health of both the mother and her baby and if well utilized, a lot of maternal and neonatal deaths could be prevented. The study was aimed at assessing the uptake of facility based PNC services by mothers in communities of Namabya sub County Manafwa district in order to devise ways of improving maternal and infant health.
Methodology
A descriptive cross sectional study which incorporated both qualitative and quantitative methodologies was done. Interviews, focus group discussions and key informant interviews were used. A sample size of 288 mothers with children below 24 months was used. Multi stage sampling technique was used where by villages were used as the primary sampling units and house hold were the secondary sampling units. Probability proportion to size sampling was used to determine the number of villages per parish. Proportions and cross tabulations were used in the analysis.
Results
The median age of participants was 29 (range= 15-49) years. Utilization of PNC and ANC was at 58.3% and 83.7% respectively. Sixty one percent (61%) were aware of PNC services with their biggest source of information coming from health workers. This was also confirmed by the key informants. Factors that were significantly associated with PNC utilization were education above primary level, occupation status of mothers, parity of 5 and above, ANC attendance, place of delivery, assistant at delivery and awareness about PNC.
Conclusion:
Maternal mortality in Uganda has continued to be an area of public health concern and the progress in reducing maternal mortality and morbidity seems not to be progressing well and may be difficult to achieve the global goals. In the study, PNC which is one of the critical maternal health services was low compared to the awareness levels that were slightly high with mothers reporting their main source of information being health workers and thus besides their professional knowledge, health workers especially in rural facilities need to be trained to equip themselves with skills in communication and counselling.
ANC uptake was high at 83.7% though important to note was that though many deliveries occurred in a health facility, there were equally several deliveries that occurred outside a health facility and this greatly impacted on PNC uptake despite other barriers. There is an urgent need therefor for interventions from the HF perspective but also to increase awareness with an objective to increase facility births which eventually will impact on PNC uptake.
In Namabya the busiest facilities that offered maternal health services were faith based and supported by government though it was inadequate. There is need therefore to revamp the few existing government facilities in terms of infrastructure and stock ups to ensure increased access. Government also needs to review and establish PNC guidelines specific to rural HFs since they contain the biggest population of vulnerable women with high population growth rates in addition to advocacy for behaviour change among women in the these communities. | en_US |
