Averting Maternal Death and Disability in an Urban Network of Care in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: A Descriptive Case Study.

The non-governmental organization Comprehensive Community Based Rehabilitation in Tanzania (CCBRT) developed a multi-facility maternal and neonatal Network of Care (NOC) among 22 government hospitals and catchment facilities operating across Dar es Salaam. While facility delivery rates were above 90% in the Dar es Salaam region, the quality of services was substandard, leading to an excess of preventable maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality. In partnership with the Dar es Salaam regional health authorities CCBRT developed a plan to improve the quality of service delivery at childbirth by through a system strengthening approach, capacitating lower-level facilities to provide routine care during pregnancy and uncomplicated deliveries, as well as improving care at secondary level referral hospitals and developing an inter-connected strengthened referral system. The Regional-CCBRT partnership implemented interventions across the continuum of care that included clinical training in basic and comprehensive emergency obstetric care, investments in infrastructure, and a rigorous maternal and perinatal death audit and follow-up program. Routine data generated were reflected upon at quarterly quality improvement meetings to follow up on problems identified. The government has initiated the replication of the model. This descriptive case study uses the four domains of the Networks of Care framework to document the wide-ranging efforts made to build and maintain the CCBRT Network of Care in order to solve for specific challenges in maternal and neonatal health service delivery in the urban context of the Dar es Salaam region.

Investing in HIV services while building Kenya's health system: PEPFAR's support to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission.

Trade-offs may exist between investments to promote health system strengthening, such as investments in facilities and training, and the rapid scale-up of HIV/AIDS services. We analyzed trends in expenditures to support the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV in Kenya under the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) from 2005 to 2010. We examined how expenditures changed over time, considering health system strengthening alongside direct treatment of patients. We focused on two organizations carrying out contracts under PEPFAR: the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation and FHI360 (formerly Family Health International), a nonprofit health and development organization. We found that the average unit expenditure, or the spending on goods and services per mother living with HIV who was provided with antiretroviral drugs, declined by 52 percent, from $567 to $271, during this time period. The unit expenditure per mother-to-infant transmission averted declined by 66 percent, from $7,117 to $2,440. Meanwhile, the health system strengthening proportion of unit expenditure increased from 12 percent to 33 percent during the same time period. The analysis suggests that PEPFAR investments in prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV in Kenya became more efficient over time, and that there was no strong evidence of a trade-off between scaling up services and investing in health systems.