STRATEGIES FOR IMPROVING PROVISION OF ANTENATAL CARE BY HEALTH-CAREPROVIDERS IN HEALTH-CARE FACILITIES IN ILORIN, KWARA STATE

Abstract

The objectives are to examine if availability of health equipment; skilled health personnel; health education and promotion, and accessibility and affordability are perceived as strategies for improving provision for antenatal care among health care providers in primary health care centers in Ilorin, Kwara State. Descriptive research design of survey type was adopted for the study. The population comprised all health practitioners at government owned health care facilities in Ilorin metropolis. Multistage sampling technique of purposive, proportionate and simple random was used to select one hundred and eighty (180) respondents, and researcher designed structured questionnaire, validated by experts and tested for reliability through test- retest method was used to ascertain the reliability of the instrument and a correlation coefficient 0.68r was obtained using Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC). Descriptive statistics of frequency counts and percentage was used to analyzed the demographic data of the respondent while inferential statistics of Chi-square was used to test the postulated null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The result revealed that all the four postulated null hypotheses were rejected because all the calculated Chi-Square values were greater than the table values. Based on the findings, the study concluded that, availability of health equipment skilled health personnel, health education and promotion, and accessibility and affordability are strategies for improving provision of antenatal care among health care providers in primary health care centers in Ilorin metropolis. The researcher recommended among others, that functioning obstetric facilities and equipment should always be available 24 hours more qualified health practitioner should be deployed to antenatal sections in every health care centers.