Effective coverage of facility delivery in Bangladesh, Haiti, Malawi, Nepal, Senegal, and Tanzania

BACKGROUND: The persistence of preventable maternal and newborn deaths highlights the importance of quality of care as an essential element in coverage interventions. Moving beyond the conventional measurement of crude coverage, we estimated effective coverage of facility delivery by adjusting for facility preparedness to provide delivery services in Bangladesh, Haiti, Malawi, Nepal, Senegal, and Tanzania. METHODS: The study uses data from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and Service Provision Assessments (SPA) in Bangladesh (2014 DHS and 2014 SPA), Haiti (2012 DHS and 2013 SPA), Malawi (2015-16 DHS and 2013-14 SPA), Nepal (2016 DHS and 2015 SPA), Senegal (2016 DHS and 2015 SPA), and Tanzania (2015-16 DHS and 2014-15 SPA). We defined effective coverage as the mathematical product of crude coverage…