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Background: Reductions in neonatal mortality remain stagnant, despite gains in health care access and utilization. Nutrition interventions during antenatal care (ANC) and in the immediate postpartum period are associated with improved neonatal outcomes. Adjusting coverage estimates for the quality of care provided yields greater insight into health system performance and potential population health benefits of accessing care. In this cross-sectional study, we adjust maternity care coverage measures for quality of nutrition interventions to determine the impact on infant birth weight and breastfeeding.Methods: We used household data from the Malawi 2013-2014 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey to assess use of maternal health services and direct observations of ANC and delivery from the 2013 Service Provision Assessment to measure nutrition interventions provided. We adjusted coverage measures combining self-reported utilization of care with the likelihood of receipt of nutrition interventions. Using adjusted log-linear regression, we estimated the associations of these nutrition quality-adjusted metrics with infant birthweight and immediate breastfeeding.Results: Health facility data provided over 2500 directly observed clinical encounters and household data provided 7385 individual reports of health care utilization and outcomes. Utilization of ANC and facility-delivery was high. Women received nutrition-related interventions considerably less often than they sought care: over the course of ANC women received a median of 1.6 interventions on iron, 1 instance of nutrition counseling, and 0.06 instances of breastfeeding counseling. Nutrition quality-adjusted ANC coverage was associated with a reduced risk of low birthweight (adjusted relative risk [ARR] 0.87, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.79, 0.96) and increased likelihood of immediate breastfeeding (ARR = 1.04, 95% CI = 1.02, 1.07); nutrition quality-adjusted post-delivery care was also associated with greater uptake of immediate breastfeeding (ARR = 1.08, 95% CI = 1.02, 1.14). Based on these models, delivering nutrition interventions consistently within the existing level of coverage would decrease population prevalence of low birthweight from 13.7% to 10.8% and increase population prevalence of immediate breastfeeding from 75.9% to 86.0%.Conclusions: Linking household survey data to health service provision assessments demonstrates that despite high utilization of maternal health services in Malawi, low provision of nutrition interventions is undermining infant health. Substantial gains in newborn health are possible in Malawi if quality of existing services is strengthened. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: It is increasingly apparent that access to healthcare without adequate quality of care is insufficient to improve population health outcomes. We assess whether the most commonly measured attribute of health facilities in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs)-the structural inputs to care-predicts the clinical quality of care provided to patients.Methods and Findings: Service Provision Assessments are nationally representative health facility surveys conducted by the Demographic and Health Survey Program with support from the US Agency for International Development. These surveys assess health system capacity in LMICs. We drew data from assessments conducted in 8 countries between 2007 and 2015: Haiti, Kenya, Malawi, Namibia, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, and Uganda. The surveys included an audit of facility infrastructure and direct observation of family planning, antenatal care (ANC), sick-child care, and (in 2 countries) labor and delivery. To measure structural inputs, we constructed indices that measured World Health Organization-recommended amenities, equipment, and medications in each service. For clinical quality, we used data from direct observations of care to calculate providers' adherence to evidence-based care guidelines. We assessed the correlation between these metrics and used spline models to test for the presence of a minimum input threshold associated with good clinical quality. Inclusion criteria were met by 32,531 observations of care in 4,354 facilities. Facilities demonstrated moderate levels of infrastructure, ranging from 0.63 of 1 in sick-child care to 0.75 of 1 for family planning on average. Adherence to evidence-based guidelines was low, with an average of 37% adherence in sick-child care, 46% in family planning, 60% in labor and delivery, and 61% in ANC. Correlation between infrastructure and evidence-based care was low (median 0.20, range from -0.03 for family planning in Senegal to 0.40 for ANC in Tanzania). Facilities with similar infrastructure scores delivered care of widely varying quality in each service. We did not detect a minimum level of infrastructure that was reliably associated with higher quality of care delivered in any service. These findings rely on cross-sectional data, preventing assessment of relationships between structural inputs and clinical quality over time; measurement error may attenuate the estimated associations.Conclusion: Inputs to care are poorly correlated with provision of evidence-based care in these 4 clinical services. Healthcare workers in well-equipped facilities often provided poor care and vice versa. While it is important to have strong infrastructure, it should not be used as a measure of quality. Insight into health system quality requires measurement of processes and outcomes of care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Ending preventable newborn deaths is a global health priority, but efforts to improve coverage of maternal and newborn care have not yielded expected gains in infant survival in many settings. One possible explanation is poor quality of clinical care. We assess facility quality and estimate the association of facility quality with neonatal mortality in Malawi.Methods and Findings: Data on facility infrastructure as well as processes of routine and basic emergency obstetric care for all facilities in the country were obtained from 2013 Malawi Service Provision Assessment. Birth location and mortality for children born in the preceding two years were obtained from the 2013-2014 Millennium Development Goals Endline Survey. Facilities were classified as higher quality if they ranked in the top 25% of delivery facilities based on an index of 25 predefined quality indicators. To address risk selection (sicker mothers choosing or being referred to higher-quality facilities), we employed instrumental variable (IV) analysis to estimate the association of facility quality of care with neonatal mortality. We used the difference between distance to the nearest facility and distance to a higher-quality delivery facility as the instrument. Four hundred sixty-seven of the 540 delivery facilities in Malawi, including 134 rated as higher quality, were linked to births in the population survey. The difference between higher- and lower-quality facilities was most pronounced in indicators of basic emergency obstetric care procedures. Higher-quality facilities were located a median distance of 3.3 km further from women than the nearest delivery facility and were more likely to be in urban areas. Among the 6,686 neonates analyzed, the overall neonatal mortality rate was 17 per 1,000 live births. Delivery in a higher-quality facility (top 25%) was associated with a 2.3 percentage point lower newborn mortality (95% confidence interval [CI] -0.046, 0.000, p-value 0.047). These results imply a newborn mortality rate of 28 per 1,000 births at low-quality facilities and of 5 per 1,000 births at the top 25% of facilities, accounting for maternal and newborn characteristics. This estimate applies to newborns whose mothers would switch from a lower-quality to a higher-quality facility if one were more accessible. Although we did not find an indication of unmeasured associations between the instrument and outcome, this remains a potential limitation of IV analysis.Conclusions: Poor quality of delivery facilities is associated with higher risk of newborn mortality in Malawi. A shift in focus from increasing utilization of delivery facilities to improving their quality is needed if global targets for further reductions in newborn mortality are to be achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Antibiotic resistance is a major threat to global health. Although detailed information about antibiotic use in high-income countries is available, little is known regarding the use of antibiotics and cumulative exposure to antibiotics in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). We aimed to quantify antibiotic exposure in children younger than 5 years in LMICs.Methods: We did a cross-sectional study in sick children younger than 5 years who attended a health-care facility in eight LMICs (Haiti, Kenya, Malawi, Namibia, Nepal, Senegal, Tanzania, and Uganda) between May, 2006, and December, 2016. Demographic and Health Surveys were used to estimate the cumulative number of illnesses related to a fever or cough and the cumulative number of visits to a health-care facility because of these illnesses for each country. We also used clinical observation data from nationally representative health-care facility-based Service Provision Assessment (SPA) surveys to estimate the proportion of children who were prescribed an antibiotic during a visit to a health-care facility and the number of antibiotic prescriptions issued that were unrelated to fever or respiratory problems. By combining these estimates, and using bootstrap analysis to compute uncertainty intervals, we estimated cumulative antibiotic exposure in children from birth up to age 5 years in each LMIC.Findings: From SPA surveys, we identified 22 519 clinical observations of children younger than 5 years who visited a health-care facility because of an illness between July, 2007, and December, 2016. From DHS surveys, we identified 68 826 children younger than 5 years who visited a health-care facility between May, 2006, and November, 2016. 85·4% of health-care facility visits were related to either a fever or cough. Antibiotics were prescribed to 80·5% of children diagnosed with respiratory illness, 50·1% with diarrhoea, and 28·3% with malaria. The mean number of antibiotic prescriptions issued to children between birth and age 5 years across the eight LMICs was 24·5 (95% CI 22·6-26·7), ranging from 7·1 (6·3-7·9) in Senegal to 59·1 (54·1-64·6) in Uganda.Interpretation: Between birth and age 5 years, children in LMICs are prescribed a remarkably high number of antibiotics. A large proportion of these prescriptions appear to be unnecessary. National and local efforts to reduce unnecessary prescription of antibiotics to children would likely improve both patient wellbeing (in terms of preventing side-effects) and reduce the global threat of antimicrobial resistance.Funding: None. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Increasing the availability of basic healthcare services in low-and middle-income countries is not sufficient to meet the Sustainable Development Goal target for child survival in high-mortality settings, where healthcare utilisation is often inconsistent and quality of care can be poor. We assessed whether poor quality of sick child healthcare in Malawi is associated with low utilisation of sick child healthcare., Design: We measured two elements of quality of sick child healthcare: facility structural readiness and process of care using data from the 2013 Malawi Service Provision Assessment. Overall quality was defined as the average of these metrics. We extracted demographic data from the 2013-2014 Malawi Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey and linked households to nearby facilities using geocodes. We used logistic regression to examine the association of facility quality with utilisation of formal health services for children under 5 years of age suffering diarrhoea, fever or cough/acute respiratory illness, controlling for demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. We conducted sensitivity analyses (SAs), modifying the travel distance and population-facility matching criteria., Setting and Population: 568 facilities were linked with 9701 children with recent illness symptoms in Malawi, of whom 69% had been brought to a health facility., Results: Overall, facilities showed gaps in structural quality (62% readiness) and major deficiencies in process quality (33%), for an overall quality score of 48%. Better facility quality was associated with higher odds of utilisation of sick child healthcare services (adjusted ORs (AOR): 1.66, 95% CI: 1.04 to 2.63), as was structural quality alone (AOR: 1.33, 95% CI: 0.95 to 1.87). SAs supported the main finding., Conclusion: Although Malawi's health facilities for curative child care are widely available, quality and utilisation of sick child healthcare services are in short supply. Improving facility quality may provide a way to encourage higher utilisation of healthcare, thereby decreasing preventable childhood morbidity and mortality., Competing Interests: Competing interests: None declared., (© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2019. Re-use permitted under CC BY. Published by BMJ.)

Objective: To evaluate the service readiness of health facilities in Bangladesh, Haiti, Kenya, Malawi, Namibia, Nepal, Rwanda, Senegal, Uganda and the United Republic of Tanzania., Methods: Using existing data from service provision assessments of the health systems of the 10 study countries, we calculated a service readiness index for each of 8443 health facilities. This index represents the percentage availability of 50 items that the World Health Organization considers essential for providing health care. For our analysis we used 37-49 of the items on the list. We used linear regression to assess the independent explanatory power of four national and four facility-level characteristics on reported service readiness., Findings: The mean values for the service readiness index were 77% for the 636 hospitals and 52% for the 7807 health centres/clinics. Deficiencies in medications and diagnostic capacity were particularly common. The readiness index varied more between hospitals and health centres/clinics in the same country than between them. There was weak correlation between national factors related to health financing and the readiness index., Conclusion: Most health facilities in our study countries were insufficiently equipped to provide basic clinical care. If countries are to bolster health-system capacity towards achieving universal coverage, more attention needs to be given to within-country inequities.