Abstract:
This study examined the socio-economic implications of Maternal Health Care in
Tanzania using Masoko and Ilembo wards as a case study. The specific questions were
(a) To what extent does maternal health care utilization affect household production in
Tanzania? (b) To what degree does maternal health care utilization affect the healthy
days of maternal mothers in Tanzania? (c)To what level does maternal health care
utilization reduce vulnerability to diseases of maternal mothers in Tanzania? (d)To what
extent does maternal health care utilization affect the health expenditure of the
Tanzanians? The random probability sampling technique chose a sample size of 143
respondents. The findings show that most respondents (64%) made one to three
antenatal Care visits, while 36% made the required number of four and above antenatal
care clinic visits. Based on these data, it can be confirmed that the utilization is low. The
findings also show that the maternal mother’s age, distance, lack of education, and
income level were reasons for the low utilization of maternal health services. On the
socio-economic effects, the results showed that respondents with higher antenatal care
visit majority 76.7% of them earned more than 500,000Tzs per year compared to 23.3%
with lower antenatal care visits (p=0.0005). Furthermore, among respondents with
higher antenatal care clinic visits, only 7.6% were unhealthy for more than 40 days per
year compared to 92.4% with lower antenatal care clinic visits (p= 0.0005). In
respondents with higher antenatal care clinic visits, only 17.9% were vulnerable to
hemorrhage, puerial-sepsis, eclampsia, and anemia compared to 82.1% with lower
antenatal care clinic visits (p=0.0005). 91.4% of respondents with lower antenatal care
visits spent more than 100,000Tzs on health problems compared to only 8.6% with
higher antenatal care visits (p=0.0005). Increase of health facilities Availability and
provision of maternal health knowledge were some of the study's policy
recommendations.
