Elsevier just published a study identifying trends in facility deliveries in Kenya and determining the association between delivery location and perinatal mortality. In Kenya, where 40% of births occur at home, efforts toward increasing access to skilled birth attendants have focused on providing free maternity services in government facilities and discouraging home births.

The study shows that the increase in facility deliveries between 2009 and 2013 was not associated with a decline in perinatal mortality, and that in fact infants born in facilities had a 41% greater risk of perinatal mortality than infants born at home. The study recommends further research to assess possible explanations for this finding, including delays in referring and caring for complicated pregnancies, higher risk infants delivering at facilities, and poor quality of care in facilities.

See the abstract or request access to the full study here.

Photo: A Senior Nurse Officer conducts antenatal check up in a labour ward at Mukuru Health Centre, Nairobi, Kenya in September 2016. ©UNICEF/Noorani/UN0199753.

The WHO Global Learning Laboratory for Quality Universal Health Coverage (UHC) just released a report compiling the feedback it received from its members on the role of national authorities, organizational actors, health facilities and patients in delivering and receiving compassionate quality health services. The report aims to synthesize key literature, organizations, and interventions emerging around the topic of compassion in health care, and to spark thinking around the relationship between compassion and quality within the wider aim of achieving UHC.

Click here to access the report, as well as associated tools and resources.  

Photo: A midwife with a newborn baby at the hospital center of Befelatanana, Madagascar. © UNICEF/UN0313664/Pudlowski.