RESUMO
AIM: To discover the level of health care accorded to pregnant women, the type of professional who attends them, and to what extent guidelines proposed for monitoring pregnancies are carried through. DESIGN: A transversal, retrospective, observational study: without a control and with a random sample. SITE. The data were obtained in a Public Hospital and came from women who had been monitored at all levels of health care, whether public or private. PATIENTS: The study was of all the women who gave birth in the General Hospital over a period of three months. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN FINDINGS: An interview was administered to 500 pregnant women. It was found that the number of pregnancies attended to at the Primary Care level is small (9% in Health Centre consultations and 6% by the General Practitioner). The entry of pregnant women into the Health System is late: 48% from the fourth mont. In a high percentage of cases, no explorations of the neck of the womb are made; nor are certain analytic tests (e.g. renal and liver function tests and urinary cultures) and various complementary checks made. CONCLUSIONS: 1) Health Education programmes must be initiated at the Primary Care level, in order to draw in at an early stage the pregnant woman. 2) There is a need to use guidelines for pregnancy and develop programmes of ongoing training for Primary Care professionals, in order to improve the quality of health care during pregnancy.
