Accra-Ghana, Aug. 31, GNA – A random trail of Group Antenatal Care (G-ANC) in 14 selected health facilities in the Eastern Region has shown that pregnant women enrolled in G-ANC have improved care seeking behaviours more than pregnant women, who attended the routine ANC.
The trial was conducted under the Group Antenatal Care Delivery Project (GRAND), a five -year, Cluster Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT), done by the University of Michigan in the United States and the Dodowa Health Research Centre in Ghana.
It was funded by the National Institute of Health, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
G-ANC involves grouping women by similar gestational ages of pregnancy into small groups at the first ANC visit, the same group meets the same midwife at the recommended intervals for care.
Unlike the routine ANC, which is attended by pregnant women at all stages and with different healthcare workers, the G- ANC brings together a grouped cohort of antenatal women that actively participate in their health assessments and discussions led by same health workers.
Dr John E O Williams, a lead Researcher at the Dodowa Health Research Centre, Ghana Health Service (GHS), said the G-ANC trail showed that while health literacy scores had improved for all women attending ANC, women randomised into G-ANC exhibited greater improvement in overall health literacy than those receiving standard or individual care.
“Women attending G-ANC improved significantly in the cognitive domain of reasoning suggesting an improvement in the skills necessary to evaluate, distinguish and reason through knowledge gained,” he said.
Dr Williams said the trial showed that newborns of G-ANC mothers were more likely to receive postnatal care for six to seven days than newborns of routine ANC mothers.
Madam Vida Ami Kukula, a member of the project research team, Dodowa Health Research Centre, said G-ANC antenatal care was widely recognised as the best time to improve Birth Preparedness and Complication Readiness (BPCR).
She said unlike women, who went through random ANC, women randomised into G-ANC were significantly likely to have arranged for emergency transport, and saved money for birth.
“They are also able to identify a place for delivery, someone to accompany them to a health facility and someone to care for them when in labour,” she said.
Antenatal care (ANC) is a form of preventive health care that allows pregnant women to learn from skilled health personnel about healthy behaviours during pregnancy.
It helps them to better understand warning signs during pregnancy and childbirth, and receive social, emotional, and psychological support at this critical time in their lives.
Through antenatal care, pregnant women can also access micronutrient supplementation, treatment for hypertension to prevent eclampsia, as well as immunisation against tetanus and conduct HIV test.
