Findings have been published in Plos One and the data supporting this analysis are now freely available online. Quality of health care is a big issue globally. One facet of quality is the content of care across the continuum from pregnancy through to 28 days after birth, and this must be considered in future global maternal and newborn health strategies. For example, if a pregnant woman makes an antenatal care visit, but does not have her blood pressure measured, there has been a missed opportunity to prevent possible complications during pregnancy or childbirth.

Measuring the content of contacts with frontline workers

The IDEAS study measured how many women and their babies not only accessed routine antenatal, intra-partum, post-partum and post-natal care, but also received the recommended routine health checks during those contacts. The study was carried out in 2012 across three settings: Ethiopia, Gombe State, Northeast Nigeria, and the state of Uttar Pradesh, India.

Few women and babies received healthcare with all required content

The number of families that had contact with frontline workers suggested that demand for health care was increasing compared to previous reports from the same study sites. However, the percentage of women and babies who received care with all the recommended content was considerably lower across all stages of the continuum of care. For example, of the 61% of women who had an antenatal check while pregnant in Gombe State, Northeast Nigeria, just 11% reported receiving all the recommended content of antenatal care by the end of their pregnancy. Similar findings were observed in all three study settings:

Developing strategies to reduce missed opportunities for delivering high quality care

The study reveals the importance of measurement to inform implementation strategies that target the content of care, as highlighted recently by the Maternal Health Task Force. With increased demand for health services and global commitments to reduce maternal and newborn mortality (such as the Every Newborn Action Plan, Strategies toward ending preventable maternal mortality,and the Every Mother, Every Newborn strategy), the findings of the IDEAS study show improving content is key to reducing the number of missed opportunities to deliver life saving care in the future.