A systematic review of Demand-based & Supply-based Interventions on continuum of maternal and child healthcare in south Asian countries

Abstract

In this study, we conduct a systematic review of literature to understand the effectiveness of interventions on continuum of maternal and child healthcare services, the inter-linkages across different levels of continuum of care and the impact of continuum of care on child mortality in South Asian countries from 2000 to 2017. The Electronic databases like, Popline, PubMed, Science Direct, Scopus, Web of Science, EBSCO and Google Scholar were systematically scrutinised to obtain relevant papers. A total of 19 papers were shortlisted for the final analysis. As per our knowledge, this is the first study which conceptualises the continuum of maternal health care framework through demand-based and supply-based interventions. In addition to this, we also present pathway models collating the evidence of continuum of maternal health care services in improving maternal and child health. Furthermore, both narrative synthesis approach and theme-wise categorisation approach is adopted to analyse the selected studies. Our findings reveal a strong relationship between Demand-based & Supply-based interventions and continuum of maternal and child healthcare. Demand-based intervention (i.e. training health workers, spreading awareness through flip-charts, and folk dance) is effective in improving the CoC, while, Supply-based interventions (i.e. building hospitals, providing medicines and other equipment) strengthens the CoC in the context of South Asian countries. It also divulges strong inter-linkages across the CoC interventions. Hence, the policy makers and public agencies should emphasize more on strengthening Demand-based & Supply-based interventions that would strengthen the interlinkages across CoC.