Perception of Mobile Health Maternal Healthcare Services among Pregnant Women in Nigeria

The daunting challenge of maternal deaths resulting from preventable causes has remained a major public health issue in the developing countries of Africa and it is yet to be fully tackled. Empirical knowledge of the awareness of mobile health (m-health) maternal healthcare services among pregnant women in these parts, therefore, holds an important key to achieving success in reproductive health issues across the affected populations. Despite the introduction of mobile health services, the desirable state of reduced maternal mortality figures is yet to be achieved. This study sought to ascertain the level of awareness, extent of adoption and the challenges of m-health maternal services in southeast Nigeria. Our analysis of questionnaire-survey data on pregnant women from three states of Nigeria shows that 89.7% of respondents were aware of m-health in the study areas. However, awareness of the existence of m-health for maternal healthcare is different from usage of m-health in maternal healthcare delivery. The major challenges to its use are network failure from service providers and lack of funds for subscription, which may also mean that mobile phone ownership alone does not determine the success of m-health maternal health services in these parts. This leads to one of the recommendations that those who design mobile health application should consider offline mechanism as an alternative to the recurring network failure, for ease of use of such technology.