Readiness of health facilities to provide emergency newborn care in 16 districts in Ghana

Claire E. Bailey, University of Southampton
Davida Pappoe, University of Ghana

The 2011 Ghana EmONC needs assessment identified inadequate access to quality care as a major contributing factor to newborn mortality. The Quality of Institutional Care (QuIC) survey provides data on health facilities ability to perform the signal functions in 63 facilities in 16 districts in Ghana. In addition to the standard basic and comprehensive signal functions QuIC also includes 3 additional measures of EmNC . The results show that a significantly lower proportion of facilities are ready to provide the additional newborn signal functions than those related to the standard 7 basic signal functions. Overall 60% of all facilities stated they were able to provide antibiotics for neonatal sepsis but this declined to only 21% which were able to deliver corticosteroids for women in preterm labour. The results suggest that EmNC may be a seriously lacking component of the Basic EmONC service delivery capability in these 16 districts in Ghana.