Impact of Mobile Telephone on Maternal Health Service Care: A Case of Njoro Division

Every minute a woman dies due to pregnancy related complications globally, and half of these deaths occur in the developing countries. Despite knowing the main causes of these deaths, maternal mortality has remained high especially in Sub-Saharan Africa with 536,000 deaths annually. One of the main challenges is access to maternal health services. This study aims at assessing whether mobile telephone will improve uptake of selected maternal health services by expectant mothers at Njoro and Nessuit Health centers in Njoro Division, Nakuru. A total of 397 women were recruited between April 2012 and July 2012 and randomly categorized into two groups for follow up. One group of 191 women were routinely given prompts and advice about their health and scheduled visits while the other group of 206 women were allowed to continue with routine antenatal visits with no mobile telephone support. The results show 7.4% of those followed up had less than 4 antenatal visits while 18.6% of those not followed up had less than 4 visits P value 0.002 which shows there was a significantly higher proportion of women on follow up who had more than 4 antenatal visits. There was a significantly higher proportion of women on follow up who received diet and place of delivery counseling, malarial prophylaxis, iron and vitamin supplements and deworming drugs. There was however no difference in those who received tetanus toxoid and HIV counseling. 88.0% of the cases on follow up gave birth in a hospital as compared to 72.8% of those not on follow up with a P value of 0.000 which indicates strong association. Overall hospital delivery was 80.1% for this group a value much higher than national figures of 44%. Women provided with mobile telephone support are more likely to follow the scheduled antenatal advice and use the services as recommended than those who do not receive any support. Therefore mobile telephone should be used routinely to improve antenatal service uptake and communication with health providers.