Trial reportBMC pregnancy and childbirth2022
Effectiveness of adjunct telephone-based postnatal care on maternal and infant illness in the Greater Accra Region, Ghana: a randomized controlled trial.
Trial report in BMC pregnancy and childbirth, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- The Effectiveness of Regionalization of Perinatal Care and Specific Facility-Based Interventions: A Systematic Review.Neonatology · 2025Pooled it
- Integrated Digital Decision-Making Systems in Maternal Nursing and Maternity Care: A Scoping Review.Journal of multidisciplinary healthcare · 2026Review
- Telehealth services for acute diseases management: principles, trends and challenges in selected health facilities in the greater Accra region, Ghana.BMC primary care · 2025Article
- Maternal Perspectives on and Preferences for an Enhanced Neonatal Jaundice Education Program: An Evaluation Using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research.Patient preference and adherence · 2024Article
- Understanding rural women's preferences for telephone call engagement with primary health care providers in Nigeria: a discrete choice experiment.BMJ global health · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionGlobally, postnatal care (PNC) is fraught with challenges. Despite high PNC coverages in Ghana's Greater Accra Region (GAR), maternal and newborn health outcomes are of great concern. In 2017, neonatal and post-neonatal mortality rates in GAR were 19 and 13 per 1000 live births respectively despite PNC coverages of 93% for at least one PNC and 87.5% for PNC within 48 hours post-delivery. Telephone follow-up has been used to improve health outcomes in some settings, however, its usefulness in improving maternal and infant health during the postnatal period is not well known in Ghana. We assessed effectiveness of telephone-based PNC on infant and maternal illness in selected hospitals in GAR.
methodsAn open-label, assessor-blinded, parallel-group, two-arm superiority randomized controlled trial with 1:1 allocation ratio was conducted from September 2020 to March 2021. Mother-baby pairs in intervention arm, in addition to usual PNC, received midwife-led telephone counselling within 48 hours post-discharge plus telephone access to midwife during postnatal period. In control arm, only usual PNC was provided. Descriptive and inferential data analyses were conducted to generate frequencies, relative frequencies, risk ratios and 95% confidence intervals. Primary analysis was by intention-to-treat (ITT), complemented by per-protocol (PP) analysis.
resultsOf 608 mother-baby pairs assessed for eligibility, 400 (65.8%) were enrolled. During 3 months follow-up, proportion of infants who fell ill was 62.5% in intervention arm and 77.5% in control arm (p = 0.001). Maternal illness occurred in 27.5% of intervention and 38.5% of control participants (p = 0.02). Risk of infant illness was 20% less in intervention than control arm in both ITT analysis [RR = 0.8 (95%CI = 0.71-0.92] and PP analysis [RR = 0.8 (95%CI = 0.67-0.89)]. Compared to controls, risk of maternal illness in intervention arm was 30% lower in both ITT [RR = 0.7 (95%CI = 0.54-95.00)] and PP analysis [RR = 0.7 (95%CI = 0.51-0.94)].
conclusionTelephone-based PNC significantly reduced risk of maternal and infant illness within first 3 months after delivery. This intervention merits consideration as a tool for adoption and scale up to improve infant and maternal health.
trial registrationThis trial was retrospectively registered with the International Standard Randomized Controlled Trial Number (ISRCTN) Registry with number ISRCTN46905855 on 09/04/2021.
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