Vallières Frédérique, Cassidy Emma Louise, McAuliffe Eilish, Isselmou Sidina Ould, Hamahoullah Mohamed Saleh, Lang Juliet
Centre for Global Health, Trinity College Dublin, 7-9 Leinster Street South, Dublin 2, Ireland.
Pan Afr Med J. 2013 Mar 11;14:97. doi: 10.11604/pamj.2013.14.97.2292. Print 2013.
It is estimated that any progress made towards improving maternal and child health in Mauritania has likely stalled. A lack of reliable and up-to-date data regarding maternal and child health indicators makes it difficult to identify current gaps and adapt international programmes to meet local needs.
Using secondary data collected as part of a baseline assessment for a maternal and child health programme being implemented in two health departments, we compared maternal and child health indicators across two different samples of pregnant women and children under-five in M'bagne and Guérou. Descriptive analyses were conducted using a Pearson's Chi-Squared test, assuming a binomial distribution and a confidence level of alpha=0.05.
Our results indicated that there were marked regional differences in maternal and child health indicators between these two rural sites, with M'bagne generally performing better across a range of indicators including: immunisation rates, child registration, vitamin A supplementation, deworming, delivery in the presence of a skilled birth attendant, and post-natal care coverage. In Guérou we observed lower rates of fever, diarrhoea, and fast and difficult breathing among children under-five.
Though socio-cultural differences may play a part in explaining some of these observed differences, these alone do not account for the observed differences in maternal and child health indicators. Context-specific activities to overcome barriers to care must be designed to address such rural regional differences if we are to see an improvement across maternal and child health indicators and accelerate progress towards MDGs 4 & 5 in Mauritania.
据估计，毛里塔尼亚在改善母婴健康方面取得的任何进展可能都已停滞。缺乏关于母婴健康指标的可靠和最新数据，使得难以确定当前存在的差距，以及调整国际方案以满足当地需求。
我们利用作为在两个卫生部门实施的母婴健康方案基线评估一部分收集的二手数据，比较了姆巴涅和盖鲁两个地区不同样本的孕妇和五岁以下儿童的母婴健康指标。使用Pearson卡方检验进行描述性分析，假设为二项分布，置信水平为α = 0.05。
我们的结果表明，这两个农村地区在母婴健康指标方面存在显著的区域差异，姆巴涅在一系列指标上总体表现更好，包括：免疫接种率、儿童登记、维生素A补充、驱虫、在熟练接生员在场的情况下分娩以及产后护理覆盖率。在盖鲁，我们观察到五岁以下儿童发烧、腹泻以及呼吸急促和困难的发生率较低。
尽管社会文化差异可能在解释其中一些观察到的差异方面起到一定作用，但仅靠这些差异并不能解释母婴健康指标方面观察到的差异。如果我们希望看到母婴健康指标得到改善，并加快毛里塔尼亚实现千年发展目标4和5的进程，就必须设计针对具体情况的活动，以克服护理障碍来解决此类农村地区差异。
