Signal functions for measuring the ability of health facilities to provide abortion services: an illustrative analysis using a health facility census in Zambia

Table 3 Availability of abortion signal functions by level of facility: Zambia Health Facility Census 2005

	Total^a	Hospital	Health centre	Health post
	N = 1369	N = 97	N = 1182	N = 89
Medication abortion	Not measured
D&C or D&E	Not measured
PAC service	65 %	91 %	65 %	39 %
Intravenous fluids	Not measured
Removal of retained products (Vacuum aspiration)^b	61 %	98 %	58 %	64 %
Parenteral antibiotics^b	76 % (63–80 %)	99 % (91–99 %)	75 % (62–79 %)	67 % (38–81 %)
Parenteral oxytocic drugs (Uterotonics)^b	63 %	97 %	61 %	47 %
Blood transfusion^b	8 %	87 %	2 %	0 %
Caesarean section (Surgical/laparotomy capability)^b	7 %	80 %	1 %	0 %
Emergency contraceptives	19 %	26 %	19 %	15 %
Male condoms	93 %	57 %	96 %	92 %
Female condoms	27 %	26 %	27 %	27 %
Spermicides	2 %	6 %	2 %	1 %
Progesterone only pills	76 %	45 %	79 %	73 %
Injectables	86 %	47 %	90 %	80 %
Oral contraceptive pills	91 %	51 %	95 %	89 %
IUD	6 %	31 %	4 %	2 %
Implants	3 %	20 %	2 %	1 %
Female sterilization	5 %	60 %	1 %	0
Male sterilization	3 %	31 %	1 %	0
Family planning available 1+ days per week	95 %	71 %	97 %	91 %
Family planning available 7 days per week	28 %	19 %	29 %	30 %
1+ health professionals (nurses, midwives, clinical officers, or doctors) on duty	85 %	97 %	84 %	79 %
3+ health professionals registered	38 %	98 %	35 %	9 %
3+ doctors registered	4 %	42 %	1 %	0
1+ doctors on duty	9 %	84 %	3 %	0
Health professional with midwifery skills present or on call 24/7^b	89 % (74–91 %)	96 % (92–96 %)	88 % (74–90 %)	88 % (51–93 %)
Means of communication	61 %	94 %	61 %	27 %
Vehicle for referral^c	47 %	96 %	44 %	29 %

^aOne facility had an unclassified level
^b N for these rows is 1130 delivery facilities (90 hospitals, 989 health centres, 50 health posts and 1 unclassified facility), because these questions were not asked for the 239 facilities that did not offer delivery care. For generic functions not unique to delivery care, such as parenteral antibiotics, we could not rule out that facilities for which this question was skipped because they did not do deliveries could not actually provide the function. For this reason we also present a range of percentages (with the column N as denominator) classifying the 239 facilities without information either as all providing the function or as none providing the function for those functions that were likely to be provided in non-delivery facilities
^cFacility has a vehicle or refers with a vehicle (latter question only asked of the 1130 facilities that did deliveries)

ISSN: 1471-2393