Original Research Open Access Engendering maternal and child health care services in cross river state health agenda in Nigeria: what worked well in a pilot study Kabiru K. Salami 1* and David O. Akeju 2 Abstract Objective: This study assessed the performance of maternal and child health (MCH) services launched between 2009 and 2012, as a pilot program in two local government areas (LGAs) of Cross River State, Nigeria. Design: Interventions included: rebuilding existing staff capacity; regular supply of vaccines; improved work environment; enhancing community participation in promotion of MCH services; and strengthening the staff size by recruiting medical officers for supervision of activities and prompt response to complications. Methods: Through a 30 cluster sampling technique, a house-to-house survey approach was adopted to sample three categories of participants from 1,171 households at baseline and compare with performance of respondents from 1,299 households at end-line. Results: Results showed a 2.3% (from 11.2% to 8.9%) decrease in under-five mortality. Also, an 8% decrease in immunization rate was observed during the intervention year. There was significant improvement in the population of women who delivered babies at a health centre at baseline (30.7%) relative to the population who delivered during the intervention year (45.2%); showing a 15% impact attributable to the intervention programme. Results also show that the prevalence of diarrhea and malaria among under-fives reduced from 49% to 45% and 62.2% to 52.5% respectively. Primary health centre recorded the most increase in patronage from 21.9% at baseline to 40.7% at end-line. Conclusion: These results suggest the possibility of high rate of success for sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) pertaining to MCH in Nigeria if all stakeholders across the 774 LGAs provide the minimum inputs required to enhance the Primary Health Care (PHC) services. Keywords: Service trust, community involvement, maternal health, child health, health care services, Nigeria © 2017 Salami et al; licensee Herbert Publications Ltd. Tis is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0). Tis permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Introduction Over the past two decades, maternal and child health has attracted unprecedented attention especially in developing countries where the burden of maternal and child mortality is very high. Although maternal mortality in Nigeria has consist- ently witnessed a decline in the past few years, it is still very high at 560 per 100,000 [1] despite concerted efforts aimed at stemming it. Similarly, infant and child mortality rates still remain unacceptably high at 69 per 1,000 population of live birth [2]. Meanwhile, improving the health conditions of people, most especially reducing maternal and child mortality, through the Primary Health Care (PHC) system is a major strategy in the attainment of the highest possible level of health by all- a core objective of the World Health Organization [3]. To achieve the ‘Health for All’ objective, most countries in the world, developing countries inclusive, established a system that could turn the *Correspondence: kabsalami@yahoo.co.uk 1 Department of Sociology, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. 2 Department of Sociology, University of Lagos, Nigeria. Research Journal of Women’s Health ISSN 2054-9865 | Volume 4 | Article 3 CrossMark ← Click for updates