| Summary: | Community participation has been hailed as the panacea for most community programmes.
Community participation at high levels empowers communities, increases self-reliance, selfawareness
and confidence in self-examination of problems and seeking solutions for them
Behavioural changes are promoted and utilisation and support of services is facilitated, which is
of great importance in antenatal care and generally in this present day of HIV/AIDS. The
purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which women were participating in the
provision of antenatal care. Secondly, the study sought the pregnant women's perceptions and
expectations regarding their participation in the provision of antenatal care and to find out at
what level if any, the women wanted to be involved in the provision of antenatal care.
The theoretical model guiding this study was Rifkin' s model for evaluating community
participation. A guided interview was conducted with 30 conveniently selected pregnant
mothers residing in the area of the Chinamhora clinic. The results indicated limited participation
in the five process indicators of community participation.
However, all the women regarded community participation as being important. The majority of
the women wished to be involved at high levels of participation.
The results of this study should be valuable to health care professionais in formulating strategies
and modifying existing programmes to enhance community participation, with the
decentralisation of health services in Zimbabwe. === Health Studies === M.A. (Advanced Nursing Sciences)
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