INTERVENTION ANALYSIS OF MATERNAL HEALTHCARE ENROLLMENT AT MAMPONG GOVERNMENT HOSPITAL, GHANA

Abstract

Providing quality maternal and neonatal healthcare remains a major challenge to many developing countries. It is as part of this backdrop that Ghana and other sister countries endorsed the Millennium Development Goal 5, to help improve maternal healthcare. In a high commitment, the Government of Ghana initiated an exemption from delivery fees in April 2005 and a free maternal care in July 2008 to help address the high maternal mortality issue and to also replace the cash and carry healthcare system. Using intervention analysis of Box and Tiao, this paper quantify the effects of the interventions on maternal enrollment at the Mampong Government Hospital from January 2001 to December 2011. Results from the estimated intervention model showed an insignificant change of approximately 9 pregnant women from the first policy. The free maternal care policy rather showed a significant additional enrollment of 90 women at the hospital.

Keywords: intervention analysis, maternal healthcare, exemption from delivery fees, free maternal care