Utilization of obstetric care services in a rural community in southwestern Nigeria.

Utilization of Obstetric Services in Nigeria is very low with only a third of the deliveries being conducted under supervision of trained health personnel. Consequently maternal and infant mortality rates are unacceptably high at 1000/100,000 and 100/1000 live births per year respectively. We conducted a cross-sectional survey of 100 randomly sampled women in a rural community in Oyo State in Nigeria to study the pattern of utilization of antenatal, delivery and postnatal care services in the community. Results showed that utilization of antenatal care services to be relatively high but most of the respondents delivered at home without the supervision of trained health personnel. This poor utilization of delivery services was attributed to advanced labour and perceived poor quality of the health facilities in the community. Although postnatal care was given to the respondents, it did not include advice on family planning/child spacing. The variables found to have statistically significant association with seeking antenatal care were age and educational attainment (P < 0.0005). Educational attainment also significantly affects the respondents' choice of the place of delivery (P < 0.005). We recommend operations research to assess and improve the quality of existing health facilities and training/retraining of antenatal care providers on interpersonal communication skills, early recognition of labour and seeking delivery care. This training should also include providing advice on child spacing and use of obstetrics services provided.