Article Sidebar
Published:
Feb 19, 2013Keywords:
Article Details
The entire contents of the Tropical Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology are protected under Indian and international copyrights. The Journal, however, grants to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, perform and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works in any digital medium for any reasonable non-commercial purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship and ownership of the rights. The journal also grants the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal non-commercial use.
This journal content is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as the author is credited and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms.
Main Article Content
Utilizing community health workers as skilled birth attendants in rural communities in Nigeria
Abstract
Objective: The Nigerian Midwives Service Scheme (MSS) was designed to address the scarcity of skilled birth attendants at primary health care levels. Although, Nigeria has a rich population of trained Midwives, their
deployment and retention at communities in critical need for their skills remains a huge challenge. Community Health Workers (CHWs) are readily available and could bridge the gap of connecting the family, community and the referral facilities.
Methods: A cross-sectional survey of CHWs to assess their knowledge and skills on various aspects of maternal and newborn health care using structured questionnaire and focused group discussions.
Results: A total of 329 CHWs were studied. The mean duration of service provision related to Maternal Newborn and Child Health (MNCHs) of the participants was 8.9 years. Their general knowledge on Antenatal care (ANC) and basic midwifery was good, although majority had problems assessing gestational age using anatomical landmarks, identifying abnormal labour and diagnosing fetal distress in labor.
Conclusion: CHWs can effectively fill in the gaps in poor access to skilled birth attendance in Nigeria if given the requisite training.
Keywords: Skilled birth attendance, Community Health Workers, Maternal and New born Health, Nigeria
