User fees are used to recover costs and discourage unnecessary attendance at primary care clinics in many developing countries. In South Africa, user fees for children aged under 6 years and pregnant women were removed in 1994, and in 1997 all user fees at all primary health care clinics were abolished. The intention of these policy changes was to improve access to health services for previousl...

BACKGROUND Most previous studies on healthcare service utilization in low-income countries have not used a multilevel study design to address the importance of community-level women's autonomy. We assessed whether women's autonomy, measured at both individual and community levels, is associated with maternal healthcare service utilization in Ethiopia. METHODS We analyzed data from the 2005 an...

BACKGROUND Antenatal care (ANC) is one of the recommended interventions to reduce maternal and neonatal mortality. Yet in most Sub-Saharan African countries, high rates of ANC coverage coexist with high maternal and neonatal mortality. This disconnect has fueled calls to focus on the quality of ANC services. However, little conceptual or empirical work exists on the measurement of ANC quality a...

OBJECTIVE To describe the utilization and associated factors for preventive and curative care utilization among children affiliated to the Medical Insurance for a New Generation (SMNG). MATERIALS AND METHODS Data from the 2009 National Survey of SMNG was analyzed. RESULTS The analysis represented 1,316,867 children; 25% of urban and 37.5% of rural mothers that took their children to well-ch...

BACKGROUND An increase in perinatal mortality prompted a review of services to pregnant women in remote northern and western Queensland, Australia. In order to address the needs of the indigenous population in particular, a range of service changes was implemented to improve outcomes. OBJECTIVE This article aims to highlight the changes made in the delivery of local and regional antenatal ser...

BACKGROUND Improving maternal health is one of the eight Millennium Development Goals. It is widely accepted that the use of maternal health services helps in reducing maternal morbidity and mortality. The utilization of maternal health services is a complex phenomenon and it is influenced by several factors. Therefore, the factors at different levels affecting the use of these services need to...

BACKGROUND Many governments have made commitments to examine inequalities in healthcare access based on studies assessing the association between several socio-demographic factors and late initiation or fewer prenatal examinations. This study addressed the question of whether socio-demographic determinants were significant in explaining differences in prenatal care in one administrative region ...

Background Nowadays, one of the most components of clinical governance is to held childbirth education classes for pregnant women. On the other hand, assessment of patient’s satisfaction from the services is the most important indicators of quality of services and monitoring health services. So patient satisfaction has an important role in medical care. Therefore consideration of patient’s expe...

abstract background: pregnancy is associated with many physiological changes, which in some cases may cause serious risks such as preeclampsia, and fetal and maternal health threats. recent research has focused on the relationship between metabolic syndrome and preeclampsia. by identifying appropriate indicators for early diagnosis, maternal–fetal complications can be prevented. the present stu...