BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Approximately 1000 women die every day from pregnancy-related causes globally, with 99 percent of deaths occurring in developing countries and more than half occurring in Sub-Saharan Africa, with the majority of deaths occurring around the time of delivery. In 2008, there were an estimated 2.65 million stillbirths globally, and 3 million newborns do not survive their first month of life. Skilled assistance during childbirth, easy access to appropriate care in the event of problems, and good postnatal care within the first 24 hours of delivery are all practices that can help mothers and babies have better perinatal outcomes. The ‘health-centre intrapartum care plan,’ in which certified competent professionals manage labor, successfully manage complications, and are supported with good referral mechanisms for specialized treatment when needed, is a crucial strategy for minimizing maternal and newborn fatalities. In impoverished nations, a large percentage of moms still give birth at home, unattended by qualified health staff. Individual factors such as maternal age, parity, education, and marital status, household factors such as family size, household wealth, and community factors such as socioeconomic status, community health infrastructure, region, rural/urban residence, available health facilities, and distance to health facilities all influence the place of delivery in different ways in different contexts. Eijk et al. studied antenatal care and delivery care among women in Western Kenya and found that birth outside of health facilities was associated with older women, high parity, lower socioeconomic position, poor education levels, and more than an hour walking distance. Fosto was researching disadvantaged urban people in Nairobi.
Ochako previously established that these characteristics, together with marital status and the age of the last child at birth, influenced the utilization and timing of the first Antenatal Care (ANC) visit as well as the style of delivery. There are also significant differences in the reasons given by women for giving birth at home between and within countries. Recent studies on the degree of effect of such factors in Kenya are scarce.
The maternal death rate in Kenya has not decreased in recent years, and it may perhaps have risen from an estimated 380/100000 live births in 1990 to 530/100000 live births in 2008. Despite the fact that a number of variables may have contributed to this, such as better detection of maternal mortality, health facility delivery remained low, at 44% and 42.6 percent in the early 1990s and 1990s, respectively.
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