article · Journal of Multidisciplinary Healthcare
A community-based study conducted in Debre Berhan town, Ethiopia, evaluated the proportion of women who completed the full continuum of maternity care, defined as receiving antenatal care, skilled birth attendance, and postnatal care. Among surveyed women who gave birth within the preceding year, 37.2 percent completed the entire continuum. While this is higher than the national Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey figure of 9.1 percent from 2016, significant gaps remain. The likelihood of completing care increased significantly with higher maternal educational attainment, including primary, secondary, and tertiary education. Other factors positively associated with completion included attending an initial antenatal care visit within sixteen weeks of pregnancy, understanding key pregnancy danger signs, and being prepared for birth and potential complications. Targeted health promotion and counselling are recommended to address these gaps.
Completing the full spectrum of maternal care from pregnancy through the postnatal period is essential for reducing maternal and neonatal health risks. Identifying why women drop out of care helps healthcare planners design focused education and community programmes, particularly for mothers with less schooling, ensuring that pregnancy complications are identified early and deliveries are managed by skilled professionals.
The abstract does not indicate an application pathway for commercialisation, as the research focuses on observational public health data to guide local health promotion and clinical counselling programmes.
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BACKGROUND: The continuum of maternity care is the continuity of maternal health care services that a woman practices antenatal care, skilled birth attendant, and postnatal care. Even though there are positive inclinations towards the continuum of maternity care, the problem is still significant. So, the purpose of this study was to assess the utilization of continuum maternity care and associated factors among women who gave birth in the last 12 months before the data collection period in Debre Berhan town. METHODS: A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted from February 17 to March 15/2020. The respondents were selected by using the cluster sampling technique. Face-to-face interview was used for data collection. EpiData software version 3.1 was used for data entry and exported to SPSS version 21 for further analysis. In multivariable logistic regression, a statistically significant association has declared a p-value <0.05. RESULTS: In this study, the proportion of women who completed the continuum of maternity care was 37.2% (95% CI: 33.4-41.1). Completing primary education (AOR: 2.73, 95% CI: 1.17-6.38), secondary education (AOR: 3.11, 95% CI: 1.32-7.31), college and above educational level (AOR: 4.15, 95% CI: 1.79-9.57), initiation of first ANC visit ≤16wks (AOR: 2.57, 95% CI: 1.41-4.68), knowing key pregnancy danger signs (AOR: 1.91, 95% CI: 1.15-3.19), and well prepared on birth and complication readiness (AOR: 1.59, 95% CI: 1.10-2.32) were found to positively increase the chance of completing maternity care in our study area. CONCLUSION: Even if a higher proportion of mothers completed the continuum of maternity care in the study area than the finding at national level of 9.1% basing EDHS 2016 data, further interventions are mandatory to reach the acceptable level. Therefore, health promotion programs targeting mothers with no education and lower educational level are important to increase their awareness about the importance of completing all levels of maternity care, health education, and counseling regarding early initiation of ANC, pregnancy danger signs, and birth preparedness and complication readiness plan.
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DOI: 10.2147/jmdh.s293323
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