Caesarian section rates in private and public hospitals in Eritrea in 2007

Abstract

Background: Caesarian section is one of the skilled delivery attendance interventions that have proven to be a life saver. There are standard indications for its use in delivery. The practice of cesarean section in public and private hospitals has not been studied in Eritrea. Objective: The purpose of this retrospective descriptive study was to examine the practice of caesarian section in public and private hospital in Eritrea. Methods: The study used caesarian section data of 2007 from Orotta (public) and Sembel (private) maternity hospitals. The data was collected from the delivery records of both hospitals and was analyzed according to the time of the operation, indications, outcomes, and method of anesthesia used during the caesarian sections. Results: The rate of caesarian section delivery in this study was 10.4% [95% CI 9.3-11.5] in the public and 31.3% [95% CI of 26.2-36.4%] in the private hospital (p < 0.001). In the public hospital 75.3% of the operations were emergency caesarian sections as compared to 47.6% in the private hospital (p<0.001). Conclusion: The indications for the operations in public and private hospitals were compliant with international benchmarks. The different rates could be attributable to that private hospital was serving more of those who required elective operations.