Availability of and Accessibility to Maternal Healthcare Services in the Northern Bangladesh

Abstract

Poor women, in both rural and urban areas in the northern region of Bangladesh, suffer from high maternal mortality rates, and compared to other regions, this group also has a low proportion of up-taking ante natal care (ANC) and of births assisted by skilled attendants. This endeavour therefore took an attempt to critically examine the availability of and accessibility to maternal health care (MHC) services, provided by government and non-government organisations (NGOs) in the northern part of Bangladesh, with the specific objective of finding out how far poor women had the availability of and accessibility to MHC services. The study used both primary and secondary data to meet its objectives. Triangulation of methods (questionnaire interviews of service users and providers, and observations) were employed to collect primary data. A large number (160) of mothers who were pregnant or delivered at least one baby during the last ten years and the heads of relevant health centres were interviewed. An assortment of articles, reports, theses and books were consulted in complementing and substantiating the arguments in this study. The main findings of the study suggest that there has been an increase in the availability of and accessibility to MHC services. However, the increment varies across regions and social groups. Lastly, it concludes that rural, poor and less educated mothers have less availability of and access to MHC services compared to urban, non-poor and better educated women.

Health Facility Capacity to Provide Maternal and Newborn Healthcare Services in Unguja

“…Healthcare personnel provides the bulk of emergency obstetric and neonatal care (Bradley & Mcauliffe, 2009). Healthcare personnel shortage has also been reported by previous studies as a problem (Anwar et al, 2009;Banik, 2015;Kambala et al, 2011) leading to increased workloads, which in turn compromises the quality of care (Campbell et al, 2016;Graner et al, 2010). In some public sectors, the recruitment procedure for healthcare personnel is more bureaucratic and time consuming, but sometimes the recruitment procedure is obstructed for political reasons (Graner et al, 2010).…”