KNOWLEDGE AND ATTITUDE OF PREGNANT WOMEN ON THE BENEFITS OF ANTENATAL CARE UTILIZATION, IN KOLFE HEALTH CENTER ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA

Abstract

ABSTRACT Background: Antenatal Care (ANC), is given different meanings by different scholars, among others the meaning that says, “Antenatal Care means care before birth and includes education, counseling, screening and treatment to monitor and to promote the wellbeing of the mother and fetus”. An estimated 515,000 women die of pregnancy-related causes, a rate of over 1,400 maternal deaths each year. The overwhelming majority of these deaths and complications occur in developing countries. Effective antenatal care (ANC), appropriate emergency treatment of complications and competent referral level encompass the most effective answers to reduction of maternal deaths. There are regional variations in antenatal care utilization rate basically due to differences in the availability of health care facilities, among the regions during 1985-1990, antenatal coverage rate for the whole Africa was 60% compared to 99% for developed countries. According to the 2011 Ethiopia demographic and health survey (EDHS) Antenatal care Coverage of Ethiopia was 43%. Objectives: The overall objective of the study is to assess the knowledge and attitudes of pregnant women about the benefits of antenatal care utilization in Kolfe Health center Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.2009. Methodology: Institution based Cross-sectional study design was conducted to assess the knowledge and attitude of pregnant women on the benefit of ANC utilization in Kolfe Health Center, Addis Ababa. Structured questionnaire was used with modification from other researches as presented in literature review. SPSS version 22 was used for data entry and analysis. Result: The proportion of respondents with good knowledge was 60.3 percent with 95% confidence interval of 54.3 to 64.0 percent. The proportion of respondents with good attitude was 224(55.3%) with 95% confident interval of 50.4 to 59.5 percent. In both cases women who has partner support had higher likely hood of having good knowledge and attitude. Conclusion: According to this study three out of five women were found to have good Knowledge of ANC and greater than half of the study participant had good attitude of ANC. Their knowledge on certain aspects of antenatal care was still poor. Partner support was found to significantly affect Knowledge and attitude of woman towards ANC