Count down to Millennium Development Goal Five: Maternal Health-Seeking Behavior in Ghana

Winfred A. Avogo, Illinois State University

As we countdown to the fifth Millennium Development Goal in 2015, progress towards reducing maternal mortality in sub-Saharan Africa still lacks far behind other developing regions of the world. Skilled attendance at birth has been shown to be effective in reducing maternal mortality and morbidity. Yet, in Ghana, although 96 percent of pregnant women receive antenatal care, just over half of births are attended to by a skilled provider. Using multinomial logit models drawn from the 2007 Ghana Maternal Mortality Study, we find that although household and bio-demographic factors are significant predictors of assistance at delivery, the number of antenatal visits, the timing of first visit and the quality of care received during antenatal visits have an independent effect on skilled assistance at delivery. We situate these findings within the broader context of conceptual frameworks for analyzing the determinants and correlates of maternal mortality and morbidity in resource constrained settings.