Decentralizing maternity services to increase skilled attendance at birth and antenatal care utilization in rural Rwanda: a prospective cohort study

To evaluate the effectiveness of decentralizing ambulatory reproductive and intrapartum services to increase rates of antenatal care (ANC) utilization and skilled attendance at birth (SAB) in Rwanda. A prospective cohort study was implemented with one control and two intervention sites: decentralized ambulatory reproductive healthcare and decentralized intrapartum care. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was performed with primary outcome of lack of SAB and secondary outcome of [greater than or equal to]3 ANC visits. 536 women were entered in the study. Distance lived from delivery site significantly predicted SAB (p = 0.007), however distance lived to ANC site did not predict [greater than or equal to]3 ANC visits (p = 0.81). Neither decentralization of ambulatory reproductive healthcare (p = 0.10) nor intrapartum care (p = 0.40) was significantly associated with SAB. The control site had the greatest percentage of women receive [greater than or equal to]3 ANC visits (p < 0.001). Receiving
Author(s): Lisa M. Nathan[sup.1] , Quihu Shi[sup.2] , Kari Plewniak[sup.1] , Charles Zhang[sup.3] , Damien Nsabimana[sup.4] , Marc Sklar[sup.1] , Eugene Mutimura[sup.5] , Irwin R. Merkatz[sup.1] , Mark H. Einstein[sup.1] [...]