Equality in Maternal and Newborn Health: Modelling Geographic Disparities in Utilisation of Care in Five East African Countries.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Geographic accessibility to health facilities represents a fundamental barrier to utilisation of maternal and newborn health (MNH) services, driving historically hidden spatial pockets of localized inequalities. Here, we examine utilisation of MNH care as an emergent property of accessibility, highlighting high-resolution spatial heterogeneity and sub-national inequalities in receiving care before, during, and after delivery throughout five East African countries.

Methods

We calculated a geographic inaccessibility score to the nearest health facility at 300 x 300 m using a dataset of 9,314 facilities throughout Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. Using Demographic and Health Surveys data, we utilised hierarchical mixed effects logistic regression to exami

SUBMITTER: Ruktanonchai CW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4999282 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature