Open Access<p>When Women Deliver at Home Without a Skilled Birth Attendant: A Qualitative Study on the Role of Health Care Systems in the Increasing Home Births Among Rural Women in Southwestern Uganda</p>
Author(s) -
Esther C Atukunda,
Godfrey R Mugyenyi,
Celestino Obua,
Angella Musiimenta,
Josephine Nambi Najjuma,
Edgar Agaba,
Norma C. Ware,
Lynn T. Matthews
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
international journal of women's health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.136
H-Index - 45
ISSN - 1179-1411
DOI - 10.2147/ijwh.s248240
Subject(s) - childbirth , medicine , attendance , psychological intervention , referral , birth attendant , pregnancy , qualitative research , health facility , home birth , health care , nursing , family medicine , population , environmental health , maternal health , health services , social science , genetics , sociology , economics , biology , economic growth
Uganda's maternal mortality remains unacceptably high, with thousands of women and newborns still dying of preventable deaths from pregnancy and childbirth-related complications. Globally, Antenatal care (ANC) attendance has been associated with improved rates of skilled births. However, despite the fact that over 95% of women in Uganda attend at least one ANC, over 30% of women still deliver at home alone, or in the presence of an unskilled birth attendant, with many choosing to come to hospital after experiencing a complication. We explored barriers to women's decisions to deliver in a health care facility among postpartum women in rural southwestern Uganda, to ultimately inform interventions aimed at improving skilled facility births.