Dataset : A consolidated and harmonised Verbal Autopsy dataset from Health and Demographic Surveillance Sites in South Africa [version 1; peer review: awaiting peer review]

Acknowledgements The authors acknowledge the South African Population Research Infrastructure Network (SAPRIN), the African Health Research Institute (AHRI) and the MRC/Wits Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit (Agincourt) for their support. The authors gratefully acknowledge Chodwizadziwa Kabudula, Daniel Mahlangu, Dickman Gareta, Siyabonga Nxumalofrom and Joseph Tlouyamma from the Agincourt, AHRI and DIMAMO HDSSs who supported with data, and individuals who supported the development and maintenance of the OpenVA software. Grant information: Conceptualisation of COMCAT was supported through a parent study funded by the Joint Health Systems Research Initiative from Department for International Development (DFID)/Medical Research Council (MRC)/Wellcome Trust/Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) (MR/ P014844/1). Support was also provided through the UKRI Covid-19 Extension Allocation Fund (RG15639-15) and by the University of Aberdeen and the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) (SF10206-45). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscriptNon peer reviewedPublisher PD

Listening to health workers: lessons from Eastern Uganda for strengthening the programme for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The implementation and utilization of programmes for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV in most low income countries has been described as sub-optimal. As planners and service providers, the views of health workers are important in generating priorities to improve the effectiveness of the PMTCT programme in Uganda. We explored the lessons learnt by health workers involved in the provision of PMTCT services in eastern Uganda to better understand what more needs to be done to strengthen the PMTCT programme.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A qualitative study was conducted at Mbale Regional Referral Hospital, The AIDS Support Organisation (TASO) Mbale and at eight neighbouring health centres in eastern Uganda, between January and May 2010. Data were collected through 24 individual interviews with the health workers involved in the PMTCT programme and four key informants (2 district officials and 2 officials from TASO). Data were analyzed using the content thematic approach. Study themes and sub-themes were identified following multiple reading of interview transcripts. Relevant quotations have been used in the presentation of study findings.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The key lessons for programme improvement were: ensuring constant availability of critical PMTCT supplies, such as HIV testing kits, antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) for mothers and their babies, regular in-service training of health workers to keep them abreast with the rapidly changing knowledge and guidelines for PMTCT, ensuring that lower level health centres provide maternity services and ARVs for women in the PMTCT programme and provision of adequate facilities for effective follow-up and support for mothers.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The voices of health workers in this study revealed that it is imperative for government, civil society organizations and donors that the PMTCT programme addresses the challenges of shortage of critical PMTCT supplies, continuous health worker training and follow-up and support for mothers as urgent needs to strengthen the PMTCT programme.</p

Still too far to walk: Literature review of the determinants of delivery service use

BACKGROUND: Skilled attendance at childbirth is crucial for decreasing maternal and neonatal mortality, yet many women in low- and middle-income countries deliver outside of health facilities, without skilled help. The main conceptual framework in this field implicitly looks at home births with complications. We expand this to include "preventive" facility delivery for uncomplicated childbirth, and review the kinds of determinants studied in the literature, their hypothesized mechanisms of action and the typical findings, as well as methodological difficulties encountered. METHODS: We searched PubMed and Ovid databases for reviews and ascertained relevant articles from these and other sources. Twenty determinants identified were grouped under four themes: (1) sociocultural factors, (2) perceived benefit/need of skilled attendance, (3) economic accessibility and (4) physical accessibility. RESULTS: There is ample evidence that higher maternal age, education and household wealth and lower parity increase use, as does urban residence. Facility use in the previous delivery and antenatal care use are also highly predictive of health facility use for the index delivery, though this may be due to confounding by service availability and other factors. Obstetric complications also increase use but are rarely studied. Quality of care is judged to be essential in qualitative studies but is not easily measured in surveys, or without linking facility records with women. Distance to health facilities decreases use, but is also difficult to determine. Challenges in comparing results between studies include differences in methods, context-specificity and the substantial overlap between complex variables. CONCLUSION: Studies of the determinants of skilled attendance concentrate on sociocultural and economic accessibility variables and neglect variables of perceived benefit/need and physical accessibility. To draw valid conclusions, it is important to consider as many influential factors as possible in any analysis of delivery service use. The increasing availability of georeferenced data provides the opportunity to link health facility data with large-scale household data, enabling researchers to explore the influences of distance and service quality

Please understand when I cry out in pain: women's accounts of maternity services during labour and delivery in Ghana

BACKGROUND: This study was undertaken to investigate women's accounts of interactions with health care providers during labour and delivery and to assess the implications for acceptability and utilisation of maternity services in Ghana. METHODS: Twenty-one individual in-depth interviews and two focus group discussions were conducted with women of reproductive age who had delivered in the past five years in the Greater Accra Region. The study investigated women's perceptions and experiences of care in terms of factors that influenced place of delivery, satisfaction with services, expectations of care and whether they would recommend services. RESULTS: One component of care which appeared to be of great importance to women was staff attitudes. This factor had considerable influence on acceptability and utilisation of services. Otherwise, a successful labour outcome and non-medical factors such as cost, perceived quality of care and proximity of services were important. Our findings indicate that women expect humane, professional and courteous treatment from health professionals and a reasonable standard of physical environment. Women will consciously change their place of delivery and recommendations to others if they experience degrading and unacceptable behaviour. CONCLUSION: The findings suggest that inter-personal aspects of care are key to women's expectations, which in turn govern satisfaction. Service improvements which address this aspect of care are likely to have an impact on health seeking behaviour and utilisation. Our findings suggest that user-views are important and warrant further investigation. The views of providers should also be investigated to identify channels by which service improvements, taking into account women's views, could be operationalised. We also recommend that interventions to improve delivery care should not only be directed to the health professional, but also to general health system improvements

Improving access to health care for malaria in Africa: a review of literature on what attracts patients

BACKGROUND: Increasing access to health care services is considered central to improving the health of populations. Existing reviews to understand factors affecting access to health care have focused on attributes of patients and their communities that act as 'barriers' to access, such as education level, financial and cultural factors. This review addresses the need to learn about provider characteristics that encourage patients to attend their health services. METHODS: This literature review aims to describe research that has identified characteristics that clients are looking for in the providers they approach for their health care needs, specifically for malaria in Africa. Keywords of 'malaria' and 'treatment seek*' or 'health seek*' and 'Africa' were searched for in the following databases: Web of Science, IBSS and Medline. Reviews of each paper were undertaken by two members of the team. Factors attracting patients according to each paper were listed and the strength of evidence was assessed by evaluating the methods used and the richness of descriptions of findings. RESULTS: A total of 97 papers fulfilled the inclusion criteria and were included in the review. The review of these papers identified several characteristics that were reported to attract patients to providers of all types, including lower cost of services, close proximity to patients, positive manner of providers, medicines that patients believe will cure them, and timeliness of services. Additional categories of factors were noted to attract patients to either higher or lower-level providers. The strength of evidence reviewed varied, with limitations observed in the use of methods utilizing pre-defined questions and the uncritical use of concepts such as 'quality', 'costs' and 'access'. Although most papers (90%) were published since the year 2000, most categories of attributes had been described in earlier papers. CONCLUSION: This paper argues that improving access to services requires attention to factors that will attract patients, and recommends that public services are improved in the specific aspects identified in this review. It also argues that research into access should expand its lens to consider provider characteristics more broadly, especially using methods that enable open responses. Access must be reconceptualized beyond the notion of barriers to consider attributes of attraction if patients are to receive quality care quickly

Relating the construction and maintenance of maternal ill-health in rural Indonesia

Estimates suggest that over 350,000 deaths and more than 20 million severe disabilities result from the complications of pregnancy, childbirth or its management each year. Death and disability occur predominately among disadvantaged women in resource-poor settings and are largely preventable with adequate delivery care. This paper presents the substantive findings and policy implications from a programme of PhD research, of which the overarching objective was to assess quality of, and access to, care in obstetric emergencies. Three critical incident audits were conducted in two rural districts on Java, Indonesia: a confidential enquiry, a verbal autopsy survey, and a community-based review. The studies examined cases of maternal mortality and severe morbidity from the perspectives of local service users and health providers. A range of inter-related determining factors was identified. When unexpected delivery complications occurred, women and families were often uninformed, unprepared, found care unavailable, unaffordable, and many relied on traditional providers. Midwives in villages made important contributions by stabilising women and facilitating referrals but were often scarce in remote areas and lacked sufficient clinical competencies and payment incentives to treat the poor. Emergency transport was often unavailable and private transport was unreliable and incurred costs. In facilities, there was a reluctance to admit poorer women and those accepted were often admitted to ill-equipped, under-staffed wards. As a result, referrals between hospitals were also common. Otherwise, social health insurance, designed to reduce financial barriers, was particularly problematic, constraining quality and access within and outside facilities. Health workers and service users provided rich and explicit assessments of care and outcomes. These were used to develop a conceptual model in which quality and access are conceived of as social processes, observable through experience and reflective of the broader relationships between individuals and health systems. According to this model, differential quality and access can become both socially legitimate (imposed by structural arrangements) and socially legitimised (reciprocally maintained through the actions of individuals). This interpretation suggests that in a context of commodified care provision, adverse obstetric outcomes will occur and recur for disadvantaged women. Health system reform should focus on the unintended effects of market-based service provision to exclude those without the ability to pay for delivery care directly

Beyond 2015 : time to reposition Scandinavia in global health?

Global health currently finds itself in an exciting, almost bewildering, state of flux. A plethora of initiatives, statements, high-level meetings, and other activities are generating a continuous flow of new ideas, with the impetus at least partly driven by the advent of the 2015 target date set for the Millennium Development Goals that were adopted in 2000. Whatever shape the post-2015 global health landscape may eventually take, it is already clear that there will be new targets of some kind as the world tries to make further progress on some of the less tractable health issues