Increasing facility delivery through maternity waiting homes for women living far from a health facility in rural Zambia: a quasi-experimental study.

OBJECTIVE: To report on the effectiveness of a standardised core Maternity Waiting Home (MWH) model to increase facility deliveries among women living >10 km from a health facility. DESIGN: Quasi-experimental design with partial randomisation at the cluster level. SETTING: Seven rural districts in Zambia. POPULATION: Women delivering at 40 health facilities between June 2016 and August 2018. METHODS: Twenty intervention and 20 comparison sites were used to test whether MWHs increased facility delivery for women living in rural Zambia. Difference-in-differences (DID) methodology was used to examine the effectiveness of the core MWH model on our identified outcomes. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Differences in the change from baseline to study period in the percentage of women living >10 km from a health facility who: (1) delivered at the health facility, (2) attended a postnatal care (PNC) visit and (3) were referred to a higher-level health facility between intervention and comparison group. RESULTS: We detected a significant difference in the percentage of deliveries at intervention facilities with the core MWH model for all women living >10 km away (DID 4.2%, 95% CI 0.6-7.6, P = 0.03), adolescent women (<18 years) living >10 km away (DID 18.1%, 95% CI 6.3-29.8, P = 0.002) and primigravida women living >10 km away (DID 9.3%, 95% CI 2.4-16.4, P = 0.01) and for women attending the first PNC visit (DID 17.8%, 95% CI 7.7-28, P < 0.001). CONCLUSION: The core MWH model was successful in increasing rates of facility delivery for women living >10 km from a healthcare facility, including adolescent women and primigravidas and attendance at the first PNC visit. TWEETABLE ABSTRACT: A core MWH model increased facility delivery for women living >10 km from a health facility including adolescents and primigravidas in Zambia.

Protocol for geolocating rural villages of women in Liberia utilizing a maternity waiting home.

OBJECTIVE: Geospatial data are used by health systems and researchers to understand disease burdens, trace outbreaks, and allocate resources, however, there are few well-documented protocols for collecting and analyzing geographic information systems data in rural areas of low- and middle-income countries. Even with the proliferation of spatial technologies such as Open Street Map and Google Maps, basic geographic data-such as village locations-are not widely available in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The purpose of this paper is to report a step-wise protocol, using geographic information system techniques and tools, developed to collect and analyze the type of spatial data necessary to calculate the distance between rural villages and maternity waiting homes located near rural primary healthcare facilities in Bong County, Liberia. RESULTS: Using a step-wise approach incorporating local healthcare provider knowledge, intensive field work, and spatial technologies such as Open Street Map and Google Maps for village geospatial data collection and verification, we identified village locations of 93.7% of the women who accessed the five maternity waiting homes in our study from 2012 to 2016.