ArticleFrontiers in global women's health2025
Routine antenatal ultrasound by nurse-midwives in rural Kenya: a pragmatic trial assessing feasibility and effects of the
Article in Frontiers in global women's health, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Introduction: Task-sharing of obstetric ultrasound between nurse-midwives and doctors has the potential to operationalize the World Health Organization's recommendation of at least one ultrasound before 24 weeks of gestational age for every pregnant woman. Here, we report on the feasibility, acceptability, and effects of the Mimba Yangu (My Pregnancy) task-sharing approach in rural Kenya. Methods: We conducted a pragmatic trial including 28 primary care facilities between April 2021 and March 2022, selected based on feasibility criteria. Fourteen facilities received the ultrasound intervention composed of (i) task-sharing with nurse-midwives, (ii) the use of portable ultrasound devices (Lumify™) connected to a tablet, and (iii) a digital platform facilitating distant support. Hybrid training of 32 nurse-midwives was provided based on a nationally derived curriculum, including theoretical and hands-on components, by an academic team. We used (i) in-depth interviews with nurse-midwives and healthcare managers, (ii) exit interviews using a quantitative questionnaire with pregnant and recently delivered women, and (iii) data abstraction from the health facility records. We descriptively analyzed data and used a difference-in-difference analysis based on a generalized linear model to assess the effect of the intervention on the number of antenatal visits. Results: The intervention was successfully and consistently implemented during a 9-month period in all 14 health facilities providing obstetric ultrasound services to 2,799 pregnant women. Interviews with trained nurse-midwives indicated that the intervention was relevant, feasible, and acceptable. In the intervention facilities, 50.4% of pregnant women received at least one ultrasound compared with 19.2% in the comparison facilities, where women were referred to other facilities for an ultrasound based on obstetric risk factors. Conclusion: Our analysis provides evidence of the feasibility, acceptance, and positive effects on service availability of providing ultrasound at the primary care level delivered by nurse-midwives. Scalability and feasibility of such an intervention are critical to global health but will demand policy reforms to allow task-sharing at national and sub-national levels.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.