Proportion of mothers practicing kangaroo mother care at home and factors influencing the practices following hospital discharge, South Wollo, Ethiopia

Abstract

BackgroundLow birth weight continues to be a significant public health problem globally. Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) comprises of early and continuous skin-to-skin contact between mother and baby as well as exclusive breastfeeding. More interest has been given to initiate KMC at the health facility for low birth weight babies born at home but, there has been trace evidence to support initiation of KMC at home. Thus, this study was aimed to estimate the proportion of mothers who continued to practice kangaroo mother care at home and identify factors influencing this practice following hospital discharge. MethodsIt was a cross-sectional study of 190 mothers with their low birth weight babies who were discharged from KMC unit at Dessie referral and Akesta hospitals and counseled about KMC to practice at home. In the first week following hospital discharge, the data collectors visited the mothers to interview her about KMC practices and the factors influencing it and analyzed by SPSS V.25.0. Crude odds ratio and adjusted odds ratio were performed to test the association between dependent and independent variables. ResultThe proportion of mothers who practice KMC at home was 89(46.8%). Multivariate logistic regression showed that support from husband (AOR = 4.4, 95% CI = 1.8–10.4), support from health extension works(HEW)(AOR = 3.4, 95% CI = 1.6–7.2), availability of helper (AOR = 4.5, 95% CI = 1.9–4.10) and mothers explained the important of KMC (AOR = 2.3,95% CI = 1.1–4.9) were statistically associated with KMC practices at home. ConclusionThis study concludes that support comes from husband, health extension workers and family. Understanding of mothers about the importance of KMC was found to be one of the significant enhancing factors to implement KMC at home.