Choice of Place of Delivery in Nigeria: Examining the Spatial Pattern

Ezra Gayawan, Redeemer's University

Access to quality healthcare during pregnancy and in particular, during childbirth is a crucial factor for taming maternal and child mortality and morbidity. Increasing this access in developing countries depends on understanding the factors influencing maternal healthcare decision at a geographical location. This study analyzes choice of place of delivery in Nigeria using data from the 2008 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey. The choice of place of delivery (home, public sector, private sector and other places) was considered a multi-categorical response and a multinomial logistic regression model with geoadditive predictors was used to investigate determinants and spatial variation of choosing a particular place to deliver against home delivery. Inference was Bayesian an based on restricted maximum likelihood. Results show that choice of health facility against home is high in four of the thirty-seven states while choice of public health facilities against home delivery does not vary for all the states.