A Thesis/Dissertation Submitted in Partial/Fulfilment of the Requirements for
Award of the MSc in Human Resources Management (MSC. HRM) of Mzumbe
University
Evidence points that community health workers (CHWs) play a significance role in
addressing numerous child and adult health problems and postnatal care services at
the community level. In Tanzania Postnatal services are not very well utilized where
by evidence shows that women who delivered a live baby outside the health facility
did not receive a postnatal check-up, and were examined within two days of giving
birth as recommended. Women in the highest income quintiles were more likely to
receive a timely postnatal check up compared to those in the lowest quintiles. This
shows that maternal mortality continues to remain high with little evidence of
progress, as many of the world’s poorest countries like Tanzania are making
insufficient progress toward achieving Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5.
There is a scarcity of published literature on the topic. Data were collected by using
semi structured interview and questionnaire as a methods of data collection, then
purposive, convenience and snow ball sampling techniques were used in recruiting
respondents in this study, qualitative data were analyzed through ‘Thematic analysis
approach’. This analysis as a descriptive method used to objectively and
systematically look for meanings and relationships of variables and concepts within
samples of collected data.
This study reveals that CHW has a great role to play in delivering postnatal care
services at the village level despite of the barriers they are facing, also study
identifies factors leads to the utilization and non utilizations of the postnatal care
services to the women in Kilosa District among of the factors hinders utilization of
postnatal are distances from the facility, lack of the knowledge about the services
and some few community seems the services like has no important. Moreover study
revealed strategies in delivering postnatal care services in rural areas, therefore in
order to improve postnatal services this study recommends that government should
locate health services as close as possible to the community where the people live.
This could be done by training more community health workers who serve as the
critical link between communities and post them to the community level