Essential Newborn Care Practices and Associated Factors Among Mothers Who Attended Postnatal Care at Public Health Facilities in Boset District, Ethiopia

Abstract

Background: Essential newborn care is a set of comprehensive care designed to improve the health of newborns through intervention soon after birth and in the postnatal period. The World Health Organization in 2018 reported that globally every year 2.5 million neonates die during the neonatal period and 75% of the deaths occur during the first week in the neonatal period. The Lack of appropriate essential newborn care practices by the primary caregiver immediately after birth and in the postnatal period is important in determining neonatal mortality and morbidity rates. Objective: To assess essential newborn care practices and associated factors among postnatal mothers at public health facilities in Bosset District, Oromia Regional State, Ethiopia, 2021. Methods: An Institutional-based cross-sectional study was conducted from January 1 to February 20/2021 among 411 mothers who attended postnatal care at randomly selected public health facilities in the Bosset district. A Systematic sampling technique was used to select the study participants. Data were collected using a researcher-administered semi-structured questionnaire and an observation checklist. The Collected data were checked manually for completion cleaned and stored for consistency and entered into Epi info version 7.1 software then exported to the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) version 21 software for analysis. Descriptive analysis was done to describe the study population using frequency, mean, standard deviation, and percentages. Bivariate logistic regression was used to determine the association between the independent and outcome variables. The strength of the association between the variables was described using AOR with a 95% Confidence interval. Statistical significance was declared at p-value<0.05. Result: The magnitude of essential newborn care practices was 62.8% (95%CI: 58.02-67.35). Birth attendant (AOR: 25.29; 95%CI: 2.98-215), mode of delivery (AOR: 2.84; 95%CI: 1.51-5.34), overall knowledge (AOR: 21.3; 95%CI: 10.21-44.3), and mothers’ attitude toward essential newborn care (AOR: 3.46; 95%CI: 1.42-8.46) were found to have a significant association with essential newborn care practices. Conclusion and recommendation: In this study, the level of essential newborn care practice was relatively higher than the study results in Oromia Regional State. To increase essential newborn care practice is the provision of counseling mothers, creating awareness, changing the attitude of mothers, and attending delivery by a skilled birth attendant to all pregnant women were recommended.