Maternal health care services provision in sub-Saharan Africa: a scooping review

Abstract

Maternal mortality remains an excessive concern with approximately 99% of maternal deaths occurring in developing countries and more than half in low and middle-income countries. More than 75% of maternal deaths occur because of complications due to pregnancy and childbirth, making quality maternal healthcare provision an urgent necessity. The purpose of this scoping review is to explore the quality of maternal health care services provision in sub-Saharan Africa. This scooping review was conducted using the Arksey and O’Malley framework. The search was conducted in four electronic databases namely Sabinet, Web of science, Jstor and Science direct. The search included articles/journals published between January 2017-January 2022; and articles/journals in English. About 1057 articles including 23 from hand search were identified. Only 41 articles were included for final discussion. Results indicates that poor maternal health care provision persist, characterized by poor communication, lack of privacy, neglect, physical and verbal abuse, and disrespect from health care providers during labour and delivery. Unmanageable work-pressures among health care workers and inadequate resources were pointed as a major cause of poor maternal health care provision and outcomes. The study concludes that despite a noticeable reduction of MMR in countries like Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, and India, more strategies still need to be developed to improve the quality of maternal healthcare services provision in Sub-Saharan Africa, which will help in achieving the SDG 3.1, to reduce the global maternal mortality ratio to less than 70 per 100 000 live births.