Abstract:

Background: Low quality of care during labor and delivery remains the most devastating problem facing many countries. Great effort has been made globally in reducing maternal mortality ratio. These efforts have substantially improved the number of deliveries in health facilities, the proportion of deliveries attended by skilled health personnel in developing countries like Tanzania. The World Health Organization (WHO) quality standard tool for childbirth care suggests a selected number of interventional measures for quality assessment of routine monitoring during childbirth. This study aimed to assess the quality of care during admission and delivery at Bugando Medical Center in Mwanza.

Method: An interview-based cross-sectional study was conducted through convenience selection of medical staffs at the labor ward. Association between qualification of the medical staffs and fetal heart rate monitoring knowledge using partograph was obtained using chi-square test.

Results and discussion: A total of 60 medical staffs at the labor ward were recruited in the study. During the assessment of quality of care during admission, about 52% of the admissions were performed by qualified medical staffs with license and the rest admissions were performed by non- qualified medical staffs. in this study not all procedures were done during admission by each of the study participants. About two third of the admissions performed urinalysis, 35% of the admissions had HIV testing, about 3% of the admission with VDRL testing for syphilis, about 58% with Blood group identification, 15% had RBG testing, about 93% had HB testing. This indicates that, they do not meet the standard guidelines of WHO, hence poor quality of care during admission of a pregnant woman. Blood pressure measurements and also the abdominal physical examination was done to all study participants

Conclusion: Findings from this study reflect gaps in the quality of care during admission and delivery at BMC and the results support the argument for strengthening maternity care services provided by all facilities along the reference level.