Screening for infectious diseases in prenatal and childbirth: quality assessment in the municipality of Manaus, Amazonas

Abstract

During pregnancy until delivery, several complications may occur, causing in some situations its interruption before the expected outcome. Tracking and dealing with these complications in a timely manner contributes to reducing the morbidity and mortality of the mother-child binomial. This study aimed to evaluate the quality of childbirth care in the public network in the city of Manaus, using as indicators the active search, the timeliness of diagnosis and the management of infectious diseases with mandatory coverage. This was a cross-sectional study with a sample of 390 women in the immediate puerperium admitted to maternity hospitals from June to July 2015. Indicators were used to evaluate the conduct in the search, diagnosis, treatment and follow-up of five infectious diseases. Among the 390 puerperal women interviewed, the exams in the maternity hospital for screening for syphilis and HIV and hepatitis B, had a frequency of 98.2% and 99.7%, respectively, being considered regular, the one for hepatitis B was 26.2 %, being considered unsatisfactory. The observed prevalences were 3.4% for syphilis infection; 0.4 of HIV. Hepatitis B samples were negative. We observed a frequency of 81.3% and 0.8% of prenatal exams for toxoplasmosis and malaria, respectively, but there was no positivity. The study showed limitations of childbirth care provided in maternity hospitals, among them, failures in delivery and birth care, as well as competence to obtain quality care.