Maternal mortality in Uasin Gishu District, Kenya: An exploration of coverage and use of maternal health care services

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.