Provision of Woman-Friendly Care and Its Associated Factors Among Pregnant Women in Jimma Town Public Health Institutions, Ethiopia

Abstract

BACKGROUNDWoman-friendly care plays a crucial role to enhance maternal health service utilization particularly in settings wherever maternal health service utilization is low. However, it doesn’t get appropriate attention in our country with low maternal health service utilization. Therefore, this aimed to assess the provision of women-friendly care and its associated factors among mothers attending antenatal care at Jimma public health institutions.METHODSAn institution-based cross-sectional study was conducted among 303 pregnant women who attended antenatal care at Jimma public health institutions from December 1 to December 30, 2020. The sample size was calculated using the single population proportion formula and samples were taken after proportional allocation was done for the hospital and health centers using the proportion allocation formula. Data were entered into EpiData version 3.1.1 and exported into statistical packages for Social Sciences version 21.0 for cleaning and further analysis. Binary logistic regression was used to analyze the association between women-friendly care and explanatory variables. The strength of association was evaluated using an odds ratio at a 95% confidence interval and a p-value less than (<) 0.05 was considered to declare significant associations.RESULTSA total of 322 pregnant women were involved in this study and 19 questionnaires were incomplete giving a response rate of 94.1%. The proportion of women-friendly care was 60.1%[( 95% CI); (55.1–66.1)]. Women-friendly care was significantly associated with marital status AOR = 2.7[(95%CI); (1.32–5.63)], residence AOR = 4.1[(95%CI); (1.97–8.6)], mode of delivery AOR = 0.18[(95%CI); (0.05–0.6)], and choice of the health care provider AOR = 16.5[(95%CI); (6.9–37.6)].CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONThe provision of women-friendly care in this study was lower than the World Health Organization focused antenatal care recommendation. Therefore, the provision of women-friendly care that reflects factors associated with it during the provision is recommended. Health professionals and other stakeholders should consider that women may refuse to seek care from a provider who “abuses” them or does not treat them well, even if the provider is skilled in preventing and managing complications.