Development in Practice
Volume 25, Issue 4, 2015
http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cdip20/current

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Increasing access to rural maternal health services in Zambia through demand-side interventions
Cathy Green, Miniratu Soyoola, Mary Surridge, Abdul Razak Badru, Dynes Kaluba, Paula Quigley & Tendayi Kureya
pages 450-464
DOI:10.1080/09614524.2015.1027148
Published online: 24 Apr 2015
Abstract
This paper examines a demand-side intervention that significantly increased access to maternal health services in rural Zambia in a context where skilled birth attendance rates had been stagnant for over two decades. Aspects of the intervention design that were crucial to the programme’s success were the participatory and adult learning-centred approach used to mobilise intervention communities, the use of a community volunteer model, and the design’s sensitivity and responsiveness to underlying social factors and problems. The demand-side intervention is already being scaled up in six districts, and is highly suitable for national level scale-up.