Question: if a pregnant woman does not visit the clinic during her pregnancy, what is likely to happen to her and will it affect the baby?

Cheryl Andisi answered on 27 Jan 2017:

@emmy rayn,
The main purpose of visiting a clinic during pregnancy is to ensure that both the mother and child are ok.
When a baby is developing in a mothers womb, it is considered a foreign object by the body and in some cases the mothers body will react violently endangering the life of both.
There are some markers such as your blood pressure etc that might give doctors at the clinic a clue on how well your body is coping with the pregnancy, and also manage any signs that might be worrying. Other things such as the level of blood you have, given the anticipated blood loss during delivery and the extra required to ensure sufficient supply of nutrients to the growing baby are also checked.
It is never guranteed that an embryo will develop normally. It is during the clinics that how well a baby is developing is monitored. This can be done in a number of ways including palpation -where a trained medica officer physically checks how big a baby is against expected standard. The height of a mothers tummy can also be used as a proxy to the length of the womb, and the baby within it. In more advanced settings, ultrasound machines can be used to see the baby, listen to its heartbeats etc thereby giving an indication of its health.
In all Kenyan hospitals, all expectant mothers are tested for HIV. This is to ensure that there is minimal risk of HIV transmission from mother to child. In addition, mothers are given vaccines such as the tetanus one to protect themselves and their children in the first few months of life before they are able to make their own protective responses