Compliance with COVID-19 Preventive Measures and Associated Factors Among Women Attending Antenatal Care at Public Health Facilities of Debre Berhan Town, Ethiopia

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) is a highly contagious and cause for the death of many people worldwide. Due to physiological immunosuppressive state and mechanical alteration, pregnant women are at a higher risk of severe illness and adverse maternal and fetal outcomes from COVID-19 than non-pregnant women. Compliance with the preventive measures is essential to control COVID-19 related consequences. Therefore, this study aimed to assess compliance with COVID-19 preventive measures among pregnant women attending antenatal care at public facilities of Debre Berhan town, Ethiopia. METHODS: A facility-based cross-sectional study was conducted from May 1 to 30, 2021 among 402 pregnant mothers. Data were collected via a face-to-face interviewer-administered questionnaire. Then, entered into Epi-Data version 4.6 and exported to SPSS version 25 for data analysis. In multivariable logistic regression analysis, variables with p < 0.05 were declared as statistically significant and the strength of statistical association was measured by adjusted odds ratio (AOR) and 95% confidence interval (CI). RESULTS: Of the total 396 participants, 222 (56.1%) of women had a good compliance with COVID-19 preventive measures. Maternal age (25-34 years) [AOR: 1.926; 95% CI (1.084, 3.421)] and (≥35 years) [AOR: 3.018; 95% CI (1.53, 5.952)], husband educational status [AOR: 3.68; 95% CI (1.55, 8.737)], had current chronic disease [AOR: 2.516; 95% CI (1.297, 4.883)], and knowledge [AOR: 5.484; 95% CI (3.057, 9.838)] were significant predictors to have good compliance with COVID-19 preventive measures. CONCLUSION: Although COVID-19 is a global and national agenda, compliance towards its preventive measures was not sufficient enough. Therefore, scale-up the community awareness via media campaign is crucial which will eventually improve compliance. Furthermore, those women who had no pre-existing chronic diseases and those in the young age group should be given special consideration.