Readiness of Primary Hospitals in Providing Neonatal Intensive Care Services in Ethiopia

BACKGROUND: The Ethiopian neonatal mortality has not shown much progress over the years. In light of this, the country has introduced interventions such as the utilization of newborn corners and neonatal intensive care units to avert preventable neonatal deaths. This study was conducted to assess readiness of primary hospitals in providing neonatal intensive care services. METHODS: A health facility based cross-sectional study design was employed where data were collected using both prospective and retrospective techniques using a format adapted from national documents. SPSS version 25 was used for data entry and analysis using descriptive statistics. RESULTS: Data were collected from 107 of 113 (94.7%) primary hospitals due to inaccessibility of some primary hospitals. The minimum national standard requirement of a level one neonatal intensive care unit for infrastructure was met by 63% (68/107) and 44% (47/107) had fulfilled the requirements for kangaroo mother care units. The average number of neonatal intensive care unit trained nurses per primary hospital was 2.6, 0.8 for general practitioners and 2.9 support staff; all of which is less than the minimum recommended national standard. The minimum national requirement for medical equipment and renewables for primary hospital level was fulfilled by 24% (26/107) of the hospitals, 65% (70/107) for essential laboratory tests, and 87% (93/107) for clinical services and procedures. The average number of admissions during the six months prior to the data collection was 87.2 sick newborns per facility with a ‘discharged improved’ rate of 71.5%, referral out rate of 18.4% and level one neonatal intensive care unit death rate of 6.6%. The remaining newborns had either left against medical advice or were still undergoing treatment during data collection. CONCLUSIONS: The overall readiness of primary hospitals to deliver neonatal intensive care services in terms of infrastructure, human resource, medical equipment, and laboratory tests was found to be low. There is a need to fill gaps in infrastructure, medical equipment, renewables, human resource, laboratory reagents, drugs and other supplies of neonatal intensive care units of primary hospitals to garner better quality of service delivery.