Sumirtha Gandhi, Shruthi Ramesh, Umakant Dash and Suresh Babu
IIT-Madras, India
Posters & Accepted Abstracts: Prim Health Care
Background : The continuum of maternal, new born and child health care services (from pre-pregnancy care to child immunization services) has been recognised as a prerequisite to stimulate maternal and child health outcomes, and to pull down the high levels of maternal and child mortality. Objectives : To explore the effectiveness of interventions to improve the continuum of maternal and child health care services (CoC) and to understand the relative difficulties in impacting each stage of the continuum of care. To assess the linkages between the levels in continuum of care and analyse its impact on child mortality. Methodology: Using an extensive search strategy, five major databases were systematically scrutinized. Additionally, a manual search was undertaken. knowledge oriented, practice oriented, infrastructure oriented and technology-oriented themes were used to explain CoC. The outcome variables encompassed different stages of continuum of care at the first level and child mortality at the second. Results: 21 full papers were finally selected for our analysis out of total 7765 papers. It was ascertained that the knowledge-oriented approach was one of the most cost-effective methods to promote favorable behavior change. Antenatal care was found to be the most crucial stage of continuum of care, as it influenced the other stages to a great extent. Moreover, our review presents unequivocal evidence about the negative relation between child mortality and continuum of care. We conclude that policy makers should concert greater efforts on ensuring comprehensive coverage and enhancing the delivery mechanism for making better strides in this direction.
E-mail: sumirtha@gmail.com
