Reducing Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) in Nigerian PART 2

 Most times, the choices that these women make in the utilization of a health facility are based on their perception of care, and not on the actual quality of care being delivered.

Therefore, apart from the quality of services provided by a health facility, patients’ experience and perception of quality care determine the utilization of a health facility.

For example, some women prefer to subscribe to the service of traditional birth attendance due to the experience and perception of care they receive from the TBA when compared to the usual healthcare providers.

Other reasons could be as a result of the cost of care which in most cases is more affordable with TBA when compared to the usual healthcare provider.

This notion is supported by the WHO findings associating the high prevalence of maternal death in Nigeria to inequalities in access to health services as women in resource-poor settings are least likely to receive adequate, timely and affordable health services by skilled personnel compared to their counterparts in more developed countries.

Improving access to skilled birth attendance (SBA) especially through better quality primary health care (PHC) could help reduce maternal mortality rate.

To better understand the challenges of health care quality, there is need to assess both the woman’s experience of that quality and that of the healthcare provider to identify barriers to accessing care as well as priority areas for health interventions.

A useful way of addressing the issue is by deploying a combination of qualitative methods of data collection methods in assessing the quality of maternal care such as focus group discussions, providers interviews, observation, patient and community surveys, case notes and in-depth interviews.

This in addition to quantitative data can help to identify and understands the barriers to assessing healthcare.

The drawback is that there is scarcity of research evidence on patient-centred models assessing health quality in Nigeria. There is need for robust research to better understand women’s perception of quality maternal health care in Nigeria.

This is important for decision makers and policymakers in tackling avoidable maternal deaths in Nigeria.