Assessment of the effectiveness of mobile technology for community health (MoTech) initiative in improving maternal and child healthcare in the Kassena Nankana West district of Ghana

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Date
2015
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Abstract
Quality maternal and child healthcare information is an important component of maternal and child healthcare services delivery and utilisation. This is almost absent in the Kassena Nankana West District making maternal health results in the district mixed and below regional and national targets. As a result, in 2009 Ghana Health Service and its development partners that is the Grameen Foundation, Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation introduced the Mobile Technology for Community Health (MoTeCH) initiative in the maternal and child healthcare services delivery system. This study assessed the effects of the MoTeCH initiative on maternal and child healthcare services delivery. The study adopted qualitative and quantitative approaches with the ―with‖ and ―without‖ methodological design. A sample size of 200 new mothers was included for the quantitative study using the simple random sampling technique. Additionally, five community health nurses were interviewed. The study found 25 percent of the MoTeCH group not to have personal mobile phone. The study also found statistically significant associations between respondents MoTeCH status, and some maternal and child healthcare outcomes with small effect sizes. The maternal and child healthcare outcomes were better in the MoTeCH group than the non-MoTeCH group. Moreover, the study found poor mobile phone network coverage in some parts of the district. The study recommend that the Ministry of Health in collaboration with Ghana Health Service, Grameen Foundation, Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation should buy low cost mobile phones and sell them to the pregnant women and new mothers on hire purchase basis. The study also recommends that the telecommunication companies improve upon the poor network coverage in the district and also extend network services to the other parts of the district without network coverage.
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A Thesis submitted to the School of Graduate Studies ,Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Development Policy and Planning,
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