Access to a Skilled Birth Attendant in Bangladesh: What We Know and what Health System Framework can Teach Us

Journal Title: Health Systems and Policy Research - Year 2017, Vol 4, Issue 4

Abstract

Despite some visible progress in some areas of health sectors, Bangladesh is still struggling to sustain efforts towards decreasing Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR). Evidence shows that there is lower access to skilled birth attendant in Bangladesh. Access to skilled birth attendants (SBAs) during delivery has been identified as an effective mechanism to significantly reducing MMR. Previous studies have focused on socio-demographic characteristics of women including cultural and religious dynamics with communities with limited attention to the health system. Using the World Health Organisation’s health system strengthening framework, this paper analyses how health system ‘architecture’ playing role in create fragile platform for the women to access skilled birth attendants. It draws emphasis on governance and policy, financing, health information, workforce, service delivery, medicines and commodities including infrastructure. As governance is the dominant factor and plays critical role in determining success of all facets of the health system, this paper further proposes a systematic strategy that seeks to mitigate the identified challenges. Lessons from this study are relevant to guiding policy makers in Bangladesh as well as in other resource-constrained settings in making evidencebased decisions regarding strengthening the health system to access a skill birth attendant to make birth safer for both mothers and newborns.

Authors and Affiliations

Manika Saha, Emmanuel Nene Odjidja

Keywords

Related Articles

Access to a Skilled Birth Attendant in Bangladesh: What We Know and what Health System Framework can Teach Us

Despite some visible progress in some areas of health sectors, Bangladesh is still struggling to sustain efforts towards decreasing Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR). Evidence shows that there is lower access to skilled birt...

Cancer’s New Input and Output: A Possible Cure

In the case of cancer, Dr. Finke thinks such cells have excessive mitogenic divisions. To him such a process creates tumors. Dr. Finke also thinks that these abnormal tumors are created from their faulty signaling during...

Catastrophic Health Expenditure among Developing Countries

Catastrophic health expenditure (CHE) occurs when medical cost is equal or exceeding 40% of a household’s non-Poverty and poor health are common consequences of CHE and vice versa. CHE occurs in the form of out of pocket...

‘Is someone going to saw off the plank behind me?’ – Healthcare managers priorities, challenges and expectations for service delivery and transformation during economic crisis

Objectives: To appraise health system capability for transformation during economic crisis by exploring the impact of health service managers’ priorities, challenges and expectations. Methods: Survey of health service m...

Addressing Mater Dei Hospital’s Bed Occupancy Challenge: The Role of Improved Influenza Vaccine Uptake

Statistics from the triennial 2010-2013, Mater Dei Hospital Activity Analyses suggest that pressure on bed occupancy is at its greatest during the months from December to March. For the “top five” medical causes for hosp...

Download PDF file
  • EP ID EP302383
  • DOI 10.21767/2254-9137.100085
  • Views 81
  • Downloads 0

How To Cite

Manika Saha, Emmanuel Nene Odjidja (2017). Access to a Skilled Birth Attendant in Bangladesh: What We Know and what Health System Framework can Teach Us. Health Systems and Policy Research, 4(4), 1-5. https://europub.co.uk/articles/-A-302383