Male Partners Involvement in Maternal ANC Care: The View of Women Attending ANC in Hararipublic Health Institutions, Eastern Ethiopia

Abstract

Maleinvolvement in reproductive health has recently been promoted as a promising new strategy for improving maternal and child health. This is becausetheinvolvement of men in antenatal care can play a vital role in ensuring safe pregnancy, delivery and moral support to the women.However, little attention has been placed on male parnersinvolvement in maternity care in developing countries, including Ethiopia. Thus, the aim of this study was to assess male partners’ involvement in maternal ANC care and identify its associated factors among pregnant women attending their ANC in Harari Regional State of Ethiopia. Institutional based cross-sectional study was conducted among 385 randomly selected ANC attendees in Harari public health institutions from February to May 2011.Data were collected using interview based questions; which was then entered into Epidata and analyzed using SPSS. Odds ratio with 95% confidence interval was calculated to assess factors associated with male accompany at p<0.05. The result showed that only 19.7% of the women were found to be accompanied by their spouse during their recent visit to ANC. Being a housewife (AOR=2.6, 95% CI; (1.2, 5.8)), rural residents (AOR=2.7, 95% CI; (1.2, 6.0)) and women unsupportive of male involvement in maternal care (AOR= 3.5, 95% CI; (1.2, 10)) were more likely associated with unaccompanying male partners. The major reasons reported by women for not being accompanied by their male partnerswere: a pretext that males being preoccupied with work, lack of awareness on the possible complication during pregnancy, misconception that the ANC is the concern of women’s only, males’ feeling shame to accompany them on visit and lack of responsibility. In general, the involvement of male partners in maternal ANC service was found to be low in the study area. Empowering women to have open discussion with their partners about maternal health issues and creating awareness in utilizing ANC could improve male involvement in ANC in the region.