NCT03299491

An Implementation Study of Interventions to Promote Safe Motherhood in Jimma Zone Ethiopia

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 3,784 (actual)
• Sponsor: University of Ottawa · Academic / Other
• Sex: Female
• Age: 15 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

Ethiopia has one of the highest rates of maternal mortality among all countries in Africa and indeed worldwide, with a maternal mortality ratio of 676 per 100,000 live births in 2011 (UNFPA, 2012). The majority of maternal deaths are preventable through early detection and management of complications, and access to adequate obstetric care (Say et al, 2014). However, in 2011 only 34% of women received antenatal care, 10% of births were delivered at a health facility and 7% of women received postnatal care during the first two days after delivery (Ethiopian DHS, 2011). Large distances and poor access to transport are two major obstacles that women face when trying to access services. In order to facilitate timely access to obstetric care, the Ethiopian Government introduced Maternity Waiting Areas (MWAs) at health centres to enable women to stay close to health facilities as they await delivery. Utilization of MWAs has generally been low due to the poor state of the homes and lack of adequate community support. This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of two interventions to promote safe motherhood in increasing coverage of maternal health care services: (i) upgraded MWAs (ii) community and religious leader sensitization using information, education and communication (IEC) materials. The IEC materials are expected to increase leader awareness and support of antenatal care, facility deliveries, postnatal care and MWA use. Together with increased use of functional MWAs, improved support from leaders is expected to increase the proportion of facility-based births in interventions area. The interventions are also expected to positively impact antenatal care and postnatal care use in the study districts.

Detailed description

A three-arm cluster trial design will be used to measure the impact of the intervention packages in three districts (Gomma, Seka Chekorsa, Kersa) in Jimma Zone, Ethiopia. Twenty-four clusters with 160 individuals each are required to detect a 17% change in the primary outcome (proportion of facility-based births) with 80% power,assuming a cluster autocorrelation of 0.8 and an intra-cluster correlation coefficient of 0.1. Primary health care units (PHCU) which consist of a health centre and several community-based health posts will serve as trial clusters. All PHCUs with maternity waiting areas (MWAs) constructed will be eligible for selection. Eligible women will be randomly selected from PHCU catchment areas stratified by MWA functionality and health centre basic emergency obstetric care (BEmOC) capacity. This is to ensure balanced distribution of poorly functioning MWAs and facilities with diminished BEmOC capacity between trial arms. Cross-sectional household surveys will be conducted with eligible women to collect information on socio-demographics, knowledge, attitudes and practices regarding maternal health services, reproductive history and maternal health service utilization. Surveys will be administered by trained interviewers on tablet computers programmed using Open Data Kit at baseline prior to intervention roll out and at endline. Multilevel regression models will be used to quantify the effect of the intervention packages on outcomes of interest. Random effect terms for PHCUs will be included to account for the clustered nature of the data.

Conditions

• Maternal Mortality
• Maternal Morbidity

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	MWA intervention	The MWA intervention will involve upgrading existing maternity waiting areas to ensure that essential supplies and services are available to create a comfortable environment for women to temporarily reside in and have easy access to skilled obstetric services.
OTHER	IEC intervention	Community and religious leaders will each attend one-day workshops designed using participatory, adult learning methods to help participants better understand the importance of maternal health care services, identify barriers to accessing care and to strategize how to promote utilization of services. Half-day workshops will conducted in subsequent years to build on shared experiences. Health extension workers will attend 3-day workshops to identify enablers and barriers to implementation of the safe motherhood components of the health extension program and strategize on how to engage community and religious leaders to support access to maternal health care services in their communities. Half-day workshops will conducted in subsequent years for each of the participant groups to build on shared experiences.

Timeline

• Start date: 2016-10-15
• Primary completion: 2019-05-01
• Completion: 2020-10-01
• First posted: 2017-10-03
• Last updated: 2020-11-05