Quality assessment of the practice of focused antenatal care (FANC) in rural and urban primary health centres in Ekiti State

Ikeoluwapo O. Ajayi, Damilola C. Osakinle, Eunice O. Osakinle

Department of Epidemiology and Medical statistics, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria.
Department of Guidance and Counseling, Faculty of Education, Ekiti State University, Ado Ekiti, Nigeria.

DOI: 10.4236/ojog.2013.33059                

Abstract

Objective: To ascertain that standard antenatal care (Focused antenatal care) is being received at the Primary Health Care level in urban and rural areas of Ekiti State and to determine the facilitating factors and challenges to the practice of FANC in urban and rural areas. Design: Cross sectional. Setting: Primary Health Centers Participants: Pregnant women and Heads of health facilities. Methods: Two hundred respondents each from urban and rural areas primary health centres were proportionately selected from 18 primary health centers using simple random sampling. Exit interviews were conducted using the antenatal care exit interview form of the Safe Motherhood Needs Assessment package. In-depth Interviews were conducted with the heads of selected facilities. Data was analysed using descriptive statistics and Chi square test and content analysis for indepth interview. Results: More respondents 58 (29.3%) from the urban areas had the minimum contents compared to 41 (20.7%) of the rural respondents (p < 0.05) and 178 (90.8%) of the urban were taught a range of health education topics compared to 177 (88.5%) (p = 0.45). Urban respondents were about 1.6 times more likely to receive the minimum contents than rural respondents. In-depth interview results explicated the facilitating factors and challenges to focused antenatal care in the study areas. Conclusion: The findings of this study is consistent with other studies establishing the fact that better health service is available to urban residents than rural residents; however, this study has succeeded in comparing the documented standard of antenatal care with what was being practiced in the selected PHCs of the state. The basic contents of focused antenatal care in Ekiti

state were received by a small proportion of the respondents, suggesting that focused antenatal care had not fully translated into quality service; one major challenge to the delivery of standard antenatal care was inadequate number of skilled health workers especially in the rural areas. The gap between quality and utilisation of antenatal in urban and rural areas is gradually being closed up; this success should be improved upon and maintained.

Keywords

Focused Antenatal Care; Urban and Rural Differences; Ekiti State; Primary Health Centers (PHCs)

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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