Maternal Health Care Seeking Behavior in a Post-Conflict HIPC: The Case of Rwanda

Rwanda is one of nine post-conflict heavily indebted poor countries (HIPC) of the world. There was a worsening of health indicators since the early nineties on account of conflict. In light of this, we examine factors affecting maternal health care seeking behavior in Rwanda using three rounds of Rwanda Demographic and Health Survey (RDHS) data (1992, 2000, and 2005). We find that progress towards increasing the share of assisted deliveries has been slow. There has been no significant increase in the proportion of women seeking antenatal care. This could partially explain why a large proportion of women continue to deliver at home without professional assistance. Further, women who gave birth in the 5 years preceding the 2000 RDHS are less likely to deliver in a health facility than those who gave birth in the 5 years preceding the 1992 RDHS. We do not find such a result for the year 2005. We also find that women are more likely to deliver at home with professional assistance in 2000 and 2005 compared to 1992.