OBJECTIVE This study aims to assess the role of need factors with respect to the utilisation of institutional delivery services in Nepal. DESIGN An analytic study was conducted using a subset of 4079 ever married women from the 2011 Nepal Demographic and Health Survey, which utilised two-stage cluster sampling. Logistic regression with complex sample analysis was performed to evaluate the eff...

BACKGROUND According to the Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey 2014, only approximately 37 percent of women deliver in a health facility. Among the eight administrative divisions of Bangladesh, the facility delivery rate is lowest in the Sylhet division (22.6 percent) where we assessed the effect of integrated supply- and demand-side interventions on the facility-based delivery rate. ME...

BACKGROUND There is expert consensus that delivery at a health facility substantially reduces the risk of maternal death. By increasing the use of antenatal (ANC), postnatal care (PNC) and family planning, the risk of maternal death can be further reduced. There has been little investigation of factors associated with the use of these services in Pakistan. METHODS A representative household s...

Methods: A cross-sectional study was used to look at 844 women who had given birth in the previous five years in Sodo town. The study employed a multistage-sampling scheme. Codes were given for all identified women in selected kebeles (neighbourhoods) and a simple randomsampling technique was used after generating random numbers using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). SPSS was...

The Biostatistics Collaboration of Australia was formed to address the shortage of biostatisticians in that country. Academic biostatisticians are geographically spread out, with no single university department having the capacity to offer a graduate program in biostatistics. Eight universities have formed a consortium to mount such a program, with all instruction being in distance mode. Studen...

The perception of childhood as a period of dependence and innocence has a long history. Being strongly associated with the Romantic Movement of eighteenth-century Europe it resonates with more recent Western theories of child development, ideas about child rearing and policies relating to the care and education of children. The advent of a global society, however, demands that we examine and re...

BACKGROUND Afghanistan has made great strides in the coverage of health services across the country but coverage of key indicators remains low nationally and whether the poorest households are accessing these services is not well understood. METHODS We analyzed the Afghanistan Mortality Survey 2010 on utilization of inpatient and outpatient care, institutional delivery and antenatal care by w...

BACKGROUND The evaluation of payment for performance (P4P) programmes has focused mainly on understanding contributions to health service coverage, without unpacking causal mechanisms. The overall aim of the paper is to test the causal pathways through which P4P schemes may (or may not) influence maternal care outcomes. METHODS We used data from an evaluation of a P4P programme in Tanzania. D...

BACKGROUND The Indian Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY) program is a demand-side program in which the state pays women a cash incentive to deliver in an institution, with the aim of reducing maternal mortality. The JSY has had 54 million beneficiaries since inception 7 years ago. Although a number of studies have demonstrated the effect of JSY on coverage, few have examined the direct impact of the ...