Chapter five is about the role of probability in the healthcare sector. The reading is crucial and helps an individual to understand the case study at hand. In particular, the case study is about the impact of maternal healthcare on the likelihood or probability of children survival in Azerbaijan. Without understanding how to determine the likelihood of an event, it would be difficult for an individual to interpret the results and findings in the case study. When it comes to chapter six, it focuses on the confidence interval estimates. Some of the vital areas that facilitate a proper understanding of the case study are hypothesis testing, estimation, and confidence interval (Sullivan, 2011). For example, one of the hypotheses that can be deduced from the case study is that maternal healthcare increases the rate of child survival by about 16% in Azerbaijan. The paper focuses on the procedures followed in a case study “The Effect of Maternal Health on the Probability of Child Survival in Azerbaijan” by Nazim Habibov and Lida Fan and proposes an effective solution program.
Habibov and Lida conducted the study to determine how maternal health affected the rate of survival of children in Azerbaijan. They used randomized control trials (RCT) and the quasi-experiment in their study. Researchers chose Azerbaijan due to various reasons. First, Azerbaijan is a low-income transitional nation that has the highest child mortality rate. Moreover, the country has a high rate of children deliveries at home or outside the healthcare facilities. Second, researchers preferred Azerbaijan due to the availability of the current information from the Azerbaijan Demographic and Health Survey (AZDHS) of 2006 (Habibov & Fan, 2015). Third, the country’s healthcare facilities are underfunded such that they lack an adequate supply of drugs and other relevant materials that foster quality patient care. The study procedure used Mosley and Chen’s Framework that highlights the determinants of children survival. According to the framework, some of the factors that influence the survival rate of children are community input, household income, and women’s education level.
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Researchers used the simultaneous bivariate equation called biprobit. The cross-sectional survey involved an analysis of data from 8,444 females from 7,180 households who were aged from 15 to 49 years. The aspects that made AZDHS data useful include healthcare utilization, household wealth, demographics, child mortality, and educational level. In addition, AZDHS gathered information starting from the time the respondent became pregnant until the end. As such, it recorded live births, miscarriages, induced abortion, and stillbirths. For instance, in 2010, researchers found out that among 13,565 observations, 92% of infants survived and 8% died (Habibov & Fan, 2015). Overall, based on the procedure followed by Habibov and Lida, delivering a child in hospitals raises the probability of survival by 16% in Azerbaijan.
By considering Azerbaijan as one of the transitional countries with a high rate of child mortality, it would be appropriate to suggest a sustainable solution for the country. In particular, based on the data from AZDHS, it shows that many women usually deliver outside the healthcare facilities. For this reason, the first thing that the government should do is to start public awareness campaigns about the importance of children deliveries in hospitals (Victora et al., 2016). The state should not remain silent and watch many children dying due to poor accessibility of maternal healthcare. Azerbaijan’s ministry of health should find the right communication media to reach women and encourage them to deliver their children at the hospital. Moreover, the department needs to come up with an insurance plan to cover the medical expenses of females during pregnancy. By doing so, many women will not be afraid to visit hospitals when delivering since insurance companies will settle their medical expenses.
Apart from households’ socioeconomic statuses, the other thing that can reduce the rate of child mortality in Azerbaijan is educating females about the importance of maternal healthcare. Maybe many women fail to visit hospitals during child delivery since they do not understand its impacts on the infant’s survival rate. If they become aware that delivering children in healthcare facilities increased the rate of survival by 16%, expectant mothers would not ignore maternal healthcare (Habibov & Fan, 2015). If possible, the government of Azerbaijan should offer free maternity for women to encourage women to deliver children at hospitals, which would save many infants lives. Furthermore, while at healthcare facilities, females should be educated about how to take care of their young ones and the significance of vaccinations.
To conclude, Habibov and Lida’s case study is an eye-opener for transitional countries. Specifically, the rate of child mortality in Azerbaijan is high. However, providing maternal healthcare to expectant mothers in this country increases the child survival rate by 16%. On that note, the Azerbaijan government should start public awareness campaigns about the importance of children delivery at hospitals. Moreover, it should come up with an insurance program to cater to the needs of pregnant women who visit hospitals. The barriers to the education of females in the country should be eradicated so that many women can understand the significance of maternal healthcare. The case study about the impacts of maternal healthcare on children rate of survival is crucial to any medical setting. Furthermore, it shows that expectant mothers should be encouraged to deliver at hospitals to ensure infants have healthy and longer lives.
References
Habibov, N., & Fan, L. (2015). The effect of maternal healthcare on the probability of child survival in Azerbaijan. BioMed Research International, Article ID 317052.
Sullivan, L. M. (2011). Essentials of biostatistics in public health (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Jones & Bartlett Learning LLC.
Victora, C. G., Requejo, J. H., Barros, J. D., Berman, P., Bhutta, Z., Boerma, T., … Bryce, J. (2016). The Lancet, 387 (10032), 2049-2059.
