Abstract
BackgroundWith Bangladesh’s adoption of the third Sustainable Development Goal to reduce maternal mortality, the impetus for Bangladesh to continue to improve uptake of maternal healthcare is strong.MethodsUsing a propensity-score matched analysis, the present study utilized data from the 2014 Bangladesh Demographic Health survey to examine the impact of four or more antenatal care visits on skilled birth attendant use and institutional delivery.ResultsThe results revealed a significant and positive impact of four or more antenatal care visits on skilled birth attendant use and institutional delivery after matching treated and untreated mothers on included socio-demographic characteristics.ConclusionsImplementation of policies to provide at least four antenatal care visits may serve as an effective strategy to increase SBA use and institutional delivery in Bangladesh, which could contribute to the reduction of maternal mortality.
Highlights
With Bangladesh’s adoption of the third Sustainable Development Goal to reduce maternal mortality, the impetus for Bangladesh to continue to improve uptake of maternal healthcare is strong
The positive effects of antenatal care on Skilled Birth Attendant (SBA) use and institutional delivery may be biased because the distribution of factors influencing ANC use among mothers who use ANC compared to mothers who do not may still differ, even when such characteristics are controlled for within regression models [8,9,10,11]
The use of propensity scores has garnered support and its proponents regard it as a preferred method compared to traditional regression adjustments, such as logistic regression [12, 13]; we identified no studies in Bangladesh that used propensity scores to study the impact of ANC on maternal healthcare utilization
Summary
With Bangladesh’s adoption of the third Sustainable Development Goal to reduce maternal mortality, the impetus for Bangladesh to continue to improve uptake of maternal healthcare is strong. The global community has adopted Sustainable Development Goals of which goal three (SDG-3) aims to reduce the worldwide maternal mortality ratio (MMR) to 70 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births by 2030 [1]. As advocated by the World Health Organization (WHO), increased uptake of skilled birth attendants (SBAs) and deliveries within a medical institution is of paramount importance in reducing maternal mortality [3]. In. Efforts to control for such confounding associations between ANC use, SBA use, and institutional delivery in statistical analyses have traditionally been accomplished via regression analyses. Women who use ANC may inherently be more risk averse as compared to women who do not use
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