Assessment on maternal high —risk births in Tanzania: a case study of Njombe district

This study assessed maternal high- risk births among women in Njombe Region particularly Njombe District. The study was guided by three specific objectives, the first objective examines the maternal high- risk births factors among women and the second objective examine women's participation in maternal health care services in studied area. The third objective e was based on interventions measures towards maternal mortality. The study was descriptive cross-sectional employed both quantitative and qualitative approaches to analyze the problem. The study involved a sample of 299 respondents including maternal health care district officer .Tools used for data collection were questionnaire ,interviews and focused group discussion. The findings show that, majority of respondents were married with low level of education. The respondents were found in both urban and rural areas and majority were peasants with mode age of 25 years. Based on objectives, women were found to be at risks due to early childbearing, closely birth interval between one birth and other, high number of desired children and negative perception on male midwifery especially among women from rural areas. For the second objective revealed, low use of family planning methods, home delivery to some women, late timing of ANC visits, inappropriate time of stopping breast feeding and early provision of complementary food to a child. On third objective, the intervention measures suggested for reducing maternal death in the study area were; built of additional health facilities in levels of villages, wards, district and region so as to meet the needs, support maternal health care providers through training and supervision in order to provide essential and adequate maternal health care services in the district also education about maternal issues should be figured out on how the women who are in reproductive age could have before pregnancy for better precaution.