Postnatal home visit: An effective strategy to a successful postnatal care

Abstract

Home visiting is a crucial aspect of postnatal care services as recommended by the WHO, but it appears to be the most neglected service. This is due to various challenges like a shortage of manpower, inadequately skilled or trained health care workers, the non-availability of assessment tools and resources, and a lack of community awareness of the importance of postnatal care. However, it's the responsibility of health care workers, especially the midwives, to carry out postnatal home care visits to ensure the well-being of both the mother and the neonates, as well as the assessment of the environment where the newborn will be nurtured. Therefore, to ensure effective postnatal home care visits, there should be availability of adequate tools and resources for the services, training of health care personnel, allocation of experienced health care workers, and community awareness of the importance of postnatal home care visits. This review thus explained the concept of postnatal home care visits, the timing of visits, who should conduct postnatal home visits, what to look out for in mothers, babies, and environments.