Abstract
BackgroundPostnatal care (PNC) visits provide a huge benefit for ensuring appropriate breastfeeding practices, to monitor the overall health status of the newborn, to timely diagnose and intervene birth-related complications, and to plan future family planning options. Despite delayed PNC attendance have a great impact on the survival of the mother and the newborn it still receives less emphasis. As a result, most mothers do not receive PNC services early. We, therefore, aimed to determine individual and community level factors associated with delayed first Postnatal Care attendance among reproductive age group women in Ethiopia.MethodsWe used the most recent Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey (EDHS 2016) data to determine associated factors of delayed first PNC in Ethiopia. A weighted sample of 4308 women with a live birth in the two years preceding the survey was included. A multilevel logistic regression analysis was used to analyze the data. Variables with p-value < 0.05 in the multivariable multilevel logistic regression analysis were declared significantly associated with delayed first PNC attendance.ResultsIn this study, both individual level and community level factors were associated with delayed PNC attendance. Among the individual level factors: having four or more antenatal care visit [Adjusted Odd Ratio (AOR) = 0.73; 95% CI: 0.59, 0.92], delivery at a health facility [AOR = 0.04; 95% CI: 0.03, 0.05], and perceiving distance from the health facility as not a big problem [AOR = 0.73; 95% CI: 0.58, 0.91] were associated with lower odds of delayed first PNC attendance. Of community level factors: being in Oromia [AOR = 2.31; 95% CI: 1.38, 3.83] and Gambela [AOR = 2.01; 95% CI: 1.13, 3.56] regions were associated higher odds of delayed first PNC attendance.ConclusionsBoth individual level and community level factors were found to be associated with delayed PNC attendance. Strengthening antenatal care utilization, institutional delivery, and appropriate distributions of maternal health services in each region and areas far apart from the health facility are recommended.
Highlights
Postnatal care (PNC) visits provide a huge benefit for ensuring appropriate breastfeeding practices, to monitor the overall health status of the newborn, to timely diagnose and intervene birth-related complications, and to plan future family planning options
44.44% and 20.34% of participants were from Oromia and Southern Nation Nationalities and People’s region (SNNPR) regions, respectively (Table 1)
This is due to mothers who are far from the nearest health facility are less likely to receive appropriate maternal health services such as antenatal care (ANC) visits and delivery at the health facility which have their impact on early initiation of PNC visits
Summary
Postnatal care (PNC) visits provide a huge benefit for ensuring appropriate breastfeeding practices, to monitor the overall health status of the newborn, to timely diagnose and intervene birth-related complications, and to plan future family planning options. To decrease maternal and child mortality, the government of Ethiopia has successfully constructed a number of health posts, health centers, and hospitals [4]. Due to these efforts, the national prevalence of maternal mortality was decreased from 871 to 2000 to 412 per 100,000 live births in 2016. The neonatal mortality rate decreased from 97 to 1000 live births in 2000 to 29 per 1000 live births in 2016 [5,6,7,8] Despite this improvement, still, a number of maternal and child deaths occurred per year, and seems difficult to achieve the SDG by 2030. In Ethiopia, only 26% mothers delivered at health facility in 2016 [8]
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