Antenatal Care Practices in Hilly Area of Eastern Region of Nepal

Abstract

Antenatal care is provided during pregnancy to save lives of mother and foetus. The World Health Organization recommends four focused visits as sufficient for normal pregnancy. The objective of this study was to find out the antenatal care practices and its impact on birth outcome.The cross-sectional study was conducted from 28th March to 10th April, 2013 among the residents of Dhankuta municipality where 246 households were taken as subjects. Convenient purposive sampling technique was applied. Semi-structured questionnaire was used and face to face interview was conducted. Chi-square test was applied to find out the significant difference between sociodemographic characteristics and outcome variable i.e. birth outcome & antenatal care visits. Almost eighty eight percent of respondents attended ANC visits.The findings revealed that even though the fourth ANC visit was (82.4%), almost 82.5% of the pregnant women took the tetanus toxoid (TT) injections, about 81.7% received iron tablets and nearly 57.7% received albendazole. Women with School Leaving Certificate and higher education level are more likely to ANC visits (95.4%) than women with below SLC (87.9%) and no education (66.7%). Hindu women are more likely to have ANC visits (91.2%) compared to women of other religion (47.4%) (P<0.001). Furthermore, economic variable shows stronger association with ANC visits (P<0.001). We conclude that the women of the surveyed communities have placed antenatal care as priority. Lack of money and education led some of the respondents not to attend the recommended antenatal care visits. Antenatal care checkup is important for favourable birth outcome.

Attendance of fourth Antenatal Care Visit in Ethiopia: Analysis from 2016 Ethiopian Demographic Health Survey

“…However, there was no linear increase in adjusted odds ratio as the wealth status increased from poorer to richer. Study in line with this result from Nepal indicated that women living in the richest circumstance visit ANC much more frequently than those in the poorest [16] also studies from Ethiopia [17,18], Kenya [19] support this result. This might be due to access to financial resources that could have enabled women to attend antenatal services frequently.…”

Antenatal care practices among the women with children under five-years of age in an eastern Nepal village: A cross sectional study

“…Furthermore, 90% of the pregnant women took Albendazole tablet during pregnancy in this study. Similar study shows that 57.7% of pregnant women had taken Albendazole tablet during pregnancy 21 .Walking distance to the health facility and transportation availability is an important factor for the accessibility of health services.…”

Late initiation of antenatal care and its determinants: a hospital based cross-sectional study

“…Although there has been little meticulous evaluation of optimal timing of the initiation of ANC, pregnant women who receive late or no ANC are more likely to have poor or unfavorable outcomes of pregnancy. [4][5][6] Late initiation of ANC was reported as a significant risk factor for maternal mortality in some studies. [7][8][9] Therefore, ANC should begin as early as possible either at hospital/health center or during domiciliary visit of health workers in order to have sufficient time to manage risk factors, if present or to perform appropriate screening for early and timely referral.…”