What is it about?
Timely utilization of professional maternal healthcare is crucial in the fight against maternal mortality. This study analysed the effects of Ghana's National Health Insurance Scheme and the Free Maternal Healthcare policies on health facility-based childbirth. The analysis was done by fitting conditional mixed process estimator to nationally representative data with a sample of 8081 expectant mothers.
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Why is it important?
The findings show that the policies spurred health facility-based childbirth. Thus, a woman who enrolls on the national health insurance scheme and benefits from free maternal healthcare is more likely to give birth at a health facility instead of home. The effect of these policies can be enhanced by providing registration desk at health facilities for expectant mothers.
Perspectives
Ghana's national health insurance scheme is a social health insurance policy and has exemption packages for expectant mothers. Thus, the policy is meant to safeguard all, especially the poor, but pro‐wealthy disparities in coverage exists. I still believe that the poor do not have full understanding of these policies hence more education on the policies is necessary.
Dr Richard Agbanyo
University of Professional Studies
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Ghana's national health insurance, free maternal healthcare and facility-based delivery services, African Development Review, March 2020, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8268.12412.
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