Integrating Water Treatment into Antenatal Care: Impact on Use of Maternal Health Services and Household Water Treatment by Mothers—Rural Uganda, 2013

Abstract

To increase maternal health service use and household water treatment (HWT), free water treatment kits were provided at first antenatal care (ANC) visits and free water treatment sachet refills were provided at follow-up ANC visits, delivery, and postnatal visits in 46 health facilities in rural Uganda. We evaluated the impact by surveying 226 women in the initiative (intervention group) and 207 women who received ANC before the initiative began (comparison group). There was no differences in the percentages of intervention and comparison group women with ≥ 4 ANC visits; however, a higher percentage of intervention group women reported treating their drinking water (31.7% versus 19.7%, P = 0.01), and had free chlorine residual in stored water (13.5% versus 3.4%, P = 0.02) than comparison group women. The intervention did not appear to motivate increased maternal health service use, but demonstrated improvements in HWT.