Institutional Delivery Care: a tough choice among women in Teso District’ Healthline

Abstract

This paper sets to establish the factors that underlie the choice of place of delivery among expectant women in Teso District. This paper uses the data and information collected in Teso District between the year 2000 and 2001. The results indicate that out of the 76 per cent of 1170 women in the reproductive age and who had a birth during the five years preceding the study delivered their last born babies at home. This was a result of lack of access to institutionalised care, the availability of cheap and more accessible alternative care providers (TBAs) and the poor quality of services offered at the local health facilities. The traditional birth attendants and nurse/midwives were the main providers of maternal health care. The constraints to utilisation of institutionalised delivery care were manifold. The major constraints were unavailability and inaccessibility of health facilities, competing priorities, poverty, exorbitant user charges and associated costs, and poor services offered at the local health facilities. Reducing or removing these constraints would result in increased utilisation of institutionalised delivery care in the study district.