Effects of the physical accessibility of maternal health services on their use in rural Haiti

Abstract

An analysis of data from the 2000 Demographic and Health Survey shows that little use is made of antenatal and delivery-care services in rural Haiti. After adjusting for individual-level factors, poor road conditions significantly reduce the likelihood of timely receipt of antenatal care and of four or more antenatal care visits, while the availability of a health centre within 5 kilometres significantly increases the odds of each outcome. The odds of being attended at delivery by trained medical personnel and of institutional delivery are significantly reduced by mountainous terrain and distance from the nearest hospital, and are increased if a health worker providing antenatal care is present in the neighbourhood. Neighbourhood poverty reduces the likelihood of safe delivery care. The findings suggest that improving the use made of maternal healthcare services would require, among other things, improvement of the availability of services and road conditions, and the reduction of poverty.

Keywords:

• maternal health services
• health service accessibility
• poverty
• rural health
• Haiti

Notes

1. Anastasia J. Gage is at the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, Department of International Health and Development, Tulane University, 1440 Canal Street, Suite 2200, New Orleans, LA 70131, USA. E-mail: [email protected]. Marie Guirlène Calixte is at City Med, Port-au-Price, Haiti.