Male Involvement in the Maternal Health Care: Expectations of Pregnant Women in Bolgatanga Municipality in the Upper East Region of Ghana

Abstract

Background: Male involvement during pregnancy and childbirth is very important as it has been shown to increase the number of times a pregnant woman undertakes antenatal care visits before delivery. The purpose of this study was to determine whether there is a relationship between the background characteristics of participants and their male partners’ involvement in maternal health care in the Bolgatanga Municipality of Upper East Region. Methods: The study design employed was a facility-based cross-sectional study design in 9 health facilities in the Bolgatanga municipality. The study populations for this study consisted of pregnant women using antenatal services in the health facilities before the commencement of this current study and are residents of the Bolgatanga municipality. A multistage sampling strategy was used in the sampling of participants for this study with an estimated sample size of 422. Results: Findings show that the majority of 403 (95.5%) of the participants expect their male partner accompanies them during the antenatal care clinic. The chi-square test revealed that marital status had a significant influence on male partners’ support in house chore and support in antenatal care service (P-value of 0.001 and 0.002, <0.05). The level of education and region of the participants were found to have a relationship with the expectation of pregnant women that male partners help them in doing house chores antenatal care (P-value 0.027 and 0.000, <0.05). Conclusion: This study’s findings showed that pregnant women always want their male partners to accompany them to antenatal care and during labour and delivery. The pregnant women expected their male partners to be educated on the effects of pregnancy, how to take care of a pregnant woman, how to tolerate their partners, Sex during pregnancy, and how to prepare for emergencies (blood donation, transportation and finance).