This report presents results of the final evaluation of Amref Health Africa Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development (DFATD)-funded project on improving Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (MNCH) in Pastoralist and Semi-Pastoralist Communities of the Omo Valley, Ethiopia. The project was implemented between January 2012 and September 2015 in Jinka city and five districts of South Omo zone (South Ari, North Ari, Malle, Bena-Tsemay, and Salamago) of the Southern Nation Nationalities People’s Region of Ethiopia. This external evaluation was conducted by Deep Dive Research and Consulting PLC and commissioned by Amref Health Africa based on a competitive bid process to determine, as systematically and objectively as possible, the relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, impact, and sustainability of the project. The end-line evaluation began in August 2015 and was carried out over a period of one month. The main data sources for the evaluation were 769 women in the reproductive age group (15-49 years old) who gave birth in the past one year prior to the evaluation and 807 married men (husbands) who were residing in the respective project areas. A combination of qualitative and quantitative methods that included household surveys, desk reviews, key informant interviews, focus group discussions, and health facility assessments were used to gather information for this evaluation. Overall, results of the evaluation showed MNCH service quality, accessibility, and utilization in the project implementation districts were substantially improved compared with the situation before project implementation.

This evaluation indicated a significant improvement regarding overall knowledge and utilization of key maternal and child health services among men and women across the project implementation districts. Knowledge of availability of antenatal care (ANC) services and service outlets increased from 65.7% at baseline to 97.5% at this evaluation. Similarly, knowledge of the availability of institutional delivery service and service outlets increased from 24% at baseline to 97.1% at final evaluation. Furthermore, 98.7%, 63.1%, and 69.6% of women who participated in this evaluation had knowledge on the availability and source of child vaccination services, therapeutic feeding services, and child growth and monitoring services, respectively.

Nearly all surveyed women (n=723, 94.0%) received ANC at least once during their last pregnancy, while a considerable proportion of 453 (62.7%) of them completed four ANC visits as per recommendation. The proportion of women who gave birth in health institutions significantly improved from baseline. Skilled birth attendance increased from 27.3% at baseline to 85% at the final evaluation. From 2011 to 2014, the national postnatal care (PNC) service utilization rate within the first two days after delivery increased from 10% to 14.5%. This evaluation showed that 88 (14.4%) of the study participants in the project intervention woredas received PNC service within the first two days after delivery of their last baby. However, a majority (n=609, 79.2%) of women received PNC from the nearby health facility within six weeks after delivery.

• Final evaluation
• MNCH
• Pastoralist
• Omo valley
• Jinka city
• Women
• mixed methods
• ANC
• PNC
• PNC
• Knowledge
• baseline
• Cross-sectional

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Final Evaluation of Improving Maternal, Newborn and Child Health Project in Pastoralist and Semi Pastoralist Communities of the Omo Valley, Ethiopian survey datasets have information on sociodemographic characteristics of women such as the age of the mother, age of the child, residence, mother’s education, occupation, religion, and marital status. In addition to that, the datasets include the following information’s knowledge of ANC, PNC, and delivery services, source of information about ANC, delivery, and PNC services, and Access and Utilization of ANC, PNC, and Institutional Delivery. The datasets also include information regarding married men under the sociodemographic age, residence, education, religion was included. Furthermore, the datasets that occupied married men’s knowledge of selected maternal and child health care service and household decision-making authority and harmful traditional practices.

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