Better Births Initiative in South Africa

Abstract

Reliable evidence of the effects of all types of healthcare interventions exists; the challenge is to help health professionals access, understand and use this information to make more informed decisions about care. Many different interventions to change health professional behaviour have been tried and evaluated, usually in high-income settings, and the results are variable. There are specific physical and human resource constraints that mean strategies to change health professional behaviour designed and tested in North America or Europe might not be applicable or effective in an African setting. This article discusses the challenges of implementing a low cost, interactive educational programme to encourage labour ward staff in a resource-poor setting to change their practice according to evidence-based standards.