Association between HIV programs and quality of maternal health inputs and processes in Kenya.

We assessed whether quality of maternal and newborn health services is influenced by presence of HIV programs at Kenyan health facilities using data from a national facility survey. Facilities that provided services to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission had better prenatal and postnatal care inputs, such as infrastructure and supplies, and those providing antiretroviral therapy had better quality of prenatal and postnatal care processes. HIV-related programs may have benefits for quality of care for related services in the health system.

Closing the poor-rich gap in contraceptive use in urban Kenya: are family planning programs increasingly reaching the urban poor?

Introduction: Kenya is characterized by high unmet need for family planning (FP) and high unplanned pregnancy, in a context of urban population explosion and increased urban poverty. It witnessed an improvement of its FP and reproductive health (RH) indicators in the recent past, after a period of stalled progress. The objectives of the paper are to: a) describe inequities in modern contraceptive use, types of methods used, and the main sources of contraceptives in urban Kenya; b) examine the extent to which differences in contraceptive use between the poor and the rich widened or shrank over time; and c) attempt to relate these findings to the FP programming context, with a focus on whether the services are increasingly reaching the urban poor.