Ensuring that essential components of maternal health care are available is central to aversion of maternal morbidities and mortalities. This Cross-sectional study design was aimed at determining the availability of essential components of maternal health care in health facilities in South-East Nigeria. Thirty-three health facilities comprising of 16 primary, 14 secondary and 3 tertiary health facilities in South-East Nigeria were randomly sampled. The instrument used to collect data from 33 facility heads and 162 maternal healthcare providers respectively are Facility Inventory Checklist and questionnaire on Maternal Healthcare Services which is validated and the reliability score is 0.71 and 0.84 respectively. The data analysis used were summarized in table of frequency and percentages. Fisher’s exact and Mann-Whitney U tests were used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of this study revealed that the level of essential components of maternal health care services is high (80.6%) in health facilities of South-East Nigeria, Secondly 51.5% of health facilities have all components of maternal healthcare and secondly, the extent of provision of maternal health care services to childbearing women is very high (80.18% among primary, secondary and tertiary health facilities. The hypothesis tested revealed that there is no significant association between the level of health services and availabilities of some components and maternal services. Secondly, only blood transfusion service shows significant association with location of health facilities (p=0.01). Lastly, there is a significant difference in the provision of maternal services between facilities in rural and urban settings of South-East Nigeria. It is therefore recommended that facilities at primary and secondary levels need technical support by Federal and State Ministry of Health to enable them prepare adequately for skilled service provision.
- CHIKA | C. H. | ODIRA | chikachioma@gmail.com | +2347030615243, PAULINE | O. M. | EZENDUKA | poezendukap@gmail.com | +2348033476403, EDITH | N. | CHIEJINA | nkechichiejina@yahoo.com | +2348037463279
- Maternal healthcare; Signal Functions; health institutions
- Lautech Paper 4-29bd2c72