Abstract:
Background: Kenya has a high maternal mortality ration of
414/100000. The maternal health services coverage and use is low.
This may be due to health service factors as well as poor
socioeconomic, cultural poor accessibility or poor quality of services.
Objectives: to examine the factors influencing maternal health
services in Uasin/Gishu district and identify possible interventions that
can reduce maternal mortality. To make recommendations based on
the findings.
Methodology: The literature review was done using the three delay
model to analyze the sociocultural factors and the
Tanahashi/Knippenberg to analyze the service factors. In addition data
from the district and regional office and my own experience was used.
Findings: Early marriage followed by many births, is a factor that leads
to poor educational attainment for women and perpetually keeps them
dependent on the spouse. This dependency makes women unable to
make decisions even when their own lives are in danger. Other factors
are the lack of physical and economical accessibility of services. And
the last factors are adequate facilities but poor or lack of quality in our
health facilities.
Conclusion: Cultural, physical accessibility, economic and poor quality
of services are all factors contributing to mothers not using maternal
health care services in Uasin Gishu district.
Recommendations:
We need to address the culture of early marriages by creating
community awareness campaigns on the dangers and
consequences of early marriages;
Need to create conditions for education of the girl-child;
Need to introduce community based initiatives to tackle the
problem of accessibility both geographical and financial
especially during emergency obstetric complications;
We need to improve on the quality of services including post
abortal care.
