Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Antenatal Care Service among Married Women of Reproductive Age Group in Mizan Health Center, South West Ethiopia

Abstract

Back ground: Antenatal care is a medical and general care that is provided to pregnant women during pregnancy. In Ethiopia as well as in the world maternal mortality is high. Mostly this occurred due to pregnancy related complication because of lack of ad equate antenatal care service.

Objective: To assess the level of knowledge, attitude and practice of mothers towards antenatal care service in Mizan health center.

Methods:  Institutional based descriptive cross sectional study was conducted among married women of reproductive age group who came to Mizan health center from May to August 2014. A Total of 255 women were selected based on systematic random sampling technique after estimating the number of women who came to Mizan health center and they were interviewed by using interviewer administered questionnaire. The data was entered in to Epidata 3.1 and exported to SPSS version 17 for analysis. Finally descriptive analysis was done and data was presented by using tables.

Result:  Majority (88.2%) of women know about antenatal care and the rest (11.8%) do not know about antenatal care.   About 70.6% of the respondents wanted to follow antenatal care and the remaining 29.4% of women do not want to follow antenatal care if they get pregnant due to negative attitude.  Less than half (47.9%) of women practiced antenatal care follow up during their pregnancy time.

Conclusion: Knowledge and attitude of women towards antenatal care was comparatively in better position. But the practice of women was poor. Further research was recommended to identify factors which are associated with practice.

Keywords: knowledge, attitude, practice, antenatal care, Mizan