Post abortion care quality status in health facilities of Guraghe zone, Ethiopia

Background: Unsafe abortion in the developing world accounts for 13% of all maternal deaths. Ethiopia is one of the developing countries with the highest maternal mortality ratio (673 per 100,000 live births) in the world. Unsafe abortion was estimated to account for 32% of all maternal deaths in Ethiopia. Objective. To assess post abortion care quality status in health facilities of Guraghe zone. Methods. A facility based cross-sectional study design with both quantitative and qualitative methods was conducted. Patient interview, direct service observation, provider self administered questionnaire and inventory of equipment and supplies were used for the assessment. Six health centers, two hospitals and 422 post-abortion patients were included in the study. Results: Patient-provider interaction was generally satisfactory from the patient's perspective. The majority of the respondents (93.5%) said that they were treated with politeness and respect. More than half 226(56.5%) of the clients have received post abortion family planning. Overall, 83.5% of the patients were satisfied with the services. Those who said waiting time was long were less satisfied and unemployed women were more satisfied than others. Conclusion: The study has revealed several improvements as well as problems in the provision of post-abortion care service in the studied health facilities. © 2013 Tesfaye and Oljira; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.