EFFECT OF HEALTH POLICY ON MATERNAL MORTALITY IN RWANDA A CASE OF NGOMA DISTRICT HOSPITAL PERIOD: 2017-2023

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to investigate the impact of health policy on maternal mortality in Rwanda-Ngoma Hospital. The objectives of the study was: to investigate the impact of health policy on maternal mortality in Rwanda specifically Ngoma Hospital, to examine the effect of medical insurance on maternal mortality rates in Rwanda-Ngoma Hospital, to find

out the influence of training of medical staff on the maternal mortality rate in Rwanda- Ngoma Hospital, to find out the influence of mass immunization on maternal mortality rates

in Rwanda especially in Ngoma Hospital. The literatures were reviewed from different scholars and academicians in relation to the research study and the conceptual framework was based on three variables including independent variable shown as health policy and it was measured in terms of medical insurance, training medical personnel, and mass immunization, another variable was dependent variable shown as maternal mortality and it was measured in terms of malnutrition, disease, poor health services and poor antenatal care and another variable was the intervening variables that can falsify the findings of the study which includes building medical facilities, provision of medical care, educating women especially on human reproduction matters and hygiene and sanitation as well. The target population comprised 91 people and sample size of 74 respondents were considered using Yamane formula and purposive sampling technique was used. Questionnaires, documentary data and data analysis was expected to be used through SSPS version 20 while coding and cleaning the data collected from the field. And finaly the findings indicated that health policy has much impacted maternal mortality in all health sectors of Ngoma Hospital through common people owning community based health insurance at rate of 73 (98.6),easy access to medication at rate of 4 (5.4%) , financial risk protection through protecting the resources spent on nursing sick children and maternal deaths at rate of 6 (8.1%), building of medical infrastructures and facilities at rate of 49 (66.3%) nutritional awareness 1 (1.4%) to mention but few. The findings also indicated that the main causes of infant mortality are malnutrition 71(95.9%) ,diseases 58 (78.3%), poverty 47(63.5%), poor health services 53 (71.6%), poor antenatal care 60 (81.0%), lack of women awareness on motherhood 56(75.6%), poor health facilities 61 (82.4%), inappropriate medicare 42 (56.7%), inadequate immunization 49 (66.2%),untrained medical personnel in midwifery 70 (94.5%), home deliveries due to lack of mutuelle de sante 69 (93.2%), poor hygiene and sanitation 58 (78.3%) in Ngoma Hospital, the correlation between health policy measure and maternal mortality prove that all the vaiables are positively significant at p-value under 0.05, despite that all the variables in correlation with poor antennal care gave negative pearson correlation implied that the betterment of health policy decreases maternal mortality and recommendations were drawn basing on the study findings and challenges faced by Health policy beneficiaries whereby recommendations were addressed to medical personnel, government of Rwanda mainly ministry of health, local leaders, and expectant mothers and hence suggestions for further studies in line with Health policy were advised by the researcher as the study got its progress.