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When things fall apart: local responses to the reintroduction of user-fees for maternal health services in rural Malawi.
- Source :
-
Reproductive health matters [Reprod Health Matters] 2018 Nov; Vol. 26 (54), pp. 126-136. Date of Electronic Publication: 2018 Nov 02. - Publication Year :
- 2018
-
Abstract
- Despite the strong global focus on improving maternal health during past decades, there is still a long way to go to ensure equitable access to services and quality of care for women and girls around the world. To understand widely acknowledged inequities and policy-to-practice gaps in maternal health, we must critically analyse the workings of power in policy and health systems. This paper analyses power dynamics at play in the implementation of maternal health policies in rural Malawi, a country with one of the world's highest burdens of maternal mortality. Specifically, we analyse Malawi's recent experience with the temporary reintroduction of user-fees for maternity services as a response to the suspension of donor funding, a shift in political leadership and priorities, and unstable service contracts between the government and its implementing partner, the Christian Health Association of Malawi. Based on ethnographic research conducted in 2015/16, the article describes the perceptions and experiences of policy implementation among various local actors (health workers, village heads and women). The way in which maternity services "fall apart" and are "fixed" is the result of dynamic interactions between policy and webs of accountability. Policies meet with a cascade of dynamic responses, which ultimately result in the exclusion of the most vulnerable rural women from maternity care services, against the aims of global and national safe motherhood policies.
- Subjects :
- Anthropology, Cultural
Female
Health Promotion
Health Services Accessibility
Humans
Malawi
Maternal Health economics
Pregnancy
Quality of Health Care economics
Rural Health Services economics
Fee-for-Service Plans
Health Care Costs
Health Policy economics
Healthcare Disparities economics
Maternal Health Services economics
Maternal Health Services standards
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 1460-9576
- Volume :
- 26
- Issue :
- 54
- Database :
- MEDLINE
- Journal :
- Reproductive health matters
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 30388957
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1080/09688080.2018.1535688