Knowledge of postpartum complications and associated factors among women who gave birth in the last 12 months in Arba Minch Town, Southern Ethiopia, 2019: A community-based cross-sectional study

Abstract

Introduction The knowledge of women about obstetric complications can helps them to seek health care earlier before obstetric complications arise. Most maternal deaths occur due to the poor health care seeking behavior after childbirth, but little is done on maternal knowledge of postpartum complications. Therefore this study aimed to assess knowledge of postpartum complications and associated factors among women who gave birth in the last 12 months in Arba Minch Town, Sothern Ethiopia. Methods A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted on 418 women from December 01 to 15, 2019. A multi-stage sampling method was applied to reach study units. A semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect the data using face-to-face interviews. Bivariable and multivariable logistic regression was applied to examine the relationship between dependent and independent variables. Statistical significance was declared at a P-value ≤ 0.05 with the corresponding 95% confidence level. Results Knowledge of women on postpartum complications was 23.9%. Secondary and above educational level (AOR = 3.82, 95% CI: [1.70, 8.65]), Grand multiparity (AOR = 2.31, 95% CI: [1.13, 4.71]), having four and above ANC visit (AOR = 2.04, 95% CI: [1.10, 3.81]) and self-decision making power to seek care (AOR = 3.68, 95% CI: [2.21, 6.11]) were statistically significant factors. Conclusion and recommendation Mothers’ knowledge of postpartum complications was low in this study area. Improving women’s educational level, decision-making power to seek health care, and counseling during ANC follow-up may be useful approaches to increase their knowledge of postpartum complications.

Mapping Evidence on the Determinants of Postnatal Care Knowledge among Postpartum Women in sub-Saharan Africa: A Literature Review

“…All the articles reported on quantitative cross-sectional studies. Sixteen of the articles were from studies conducted in Ethiopia (Beraki et al, 2020;Yaya Tessema et al, 2023;Leta, 2022;Berhan & Gulema, 2018;Getachew et al, 2022;Berhea et al, 2018;Mose et al, 2021;Hassen & Lelisho, 2022;Mekonnen et al, 2021;Seifu et al, 2020;Guta et al, 2020;Kebede et al, 2020;Tesfaye et al, 2022;Yitayew et al, 2021;Bulto et al, 2019;Degefa, et al, 2019), two each in Kenya (Kiragu et al, 2021;Roney et al, 2021), Tanzania (Msiba et al, 2022;Nchimbi & Joho, 2022), and Rwanda (Batamuriza & Uwingabire, 2020;Deynu & Nutor, 2023), and one each in Sierra Leone (Kanu et al, 2014), Zambia (Chembe & Siziya, 2017), and South Sudan (Meseka et al, 2017). Eight of the articles (Mose et al, 2021;Guta et al, 2020;Kebede et al, 2020;Tesfaye et al, 2022;Yitayew et al, 2021;Bulto et al, 2019;Degefa, et al, 2019;Roney et al, 2021) reported on studies that researched on knowledge of neonatal danger signs (NDS), seven (Leta, 2022;Berhan & Gulema, 2018;Getachew et al, 2022;Berhea, et al, 2018;Msiba, et al, 2022;…”

“…All the articles included in this review reported on the individual-level determinants of PNC knowledge among postpartum women. The individual-level determinants of PNC knowledge include place of residence (Beraki et al, 2020;Mose et al, 2021;Mekonnen et al, 2021;Yitayew, et al, 2021;Deynu & Nutor, 2023), age of the mother (Beraki et al, 2020;Batamuriza & Uwingabire, 2020), age at first pregnancy, marital status (Beraki et al, 2020;Deynu & Nutor, 2023), educational level of the mother (Beraki et al, 2020;Yaya Tessema et al, 2023;Leta, 2022;Getachew et al, 2022;Berhea et al, 2018;Hassen & Lelisho, 2022;Seifu et al, 2020;Yitayew et al, 2021;Bulto et al, 2019;Degefa et al, 2019;Roney et al, 2021;Nchimbi & Joho, 2022;Kanu et al, 2014;Chembe & Siziya, 2017), educational level of the father (Hassen & Lelisho, 2022;Yitayew et al, 2021), and religion of the mother (Getachew et al, 2022). All articles that reported on place of residence as a determinant of PNC knowledge (Beraki et al, 2020;Mose et al, 2021;Mekonnen et al, 2021;Yitayew et al, 2021;Deynu & Nutor, 2023) revealed that those who stayed in urban areas were more likely to have good PNC knowledge compared to those who stayed in rural areas.…”

“…Two studies that reported on marital status (Beraki et al, 2020;Deynu & Nutor, 2023) revealed that women who were married were more likely to have good PNC knowledge compared to those who were not married. All the studies that reported on the educational level of the mother (Beraki et al, 2020;Yaya Tessema et al, 2023;Leta, 2022;Getachew et al, 2022;Berhea et al, 2018;Hassen & Lelisho, 2022;Seifu et al, 2020;Yitayew et al, 2021;Bulto et al, 2019;Degefa et al, 2019;Roney et al, 2021;Nchimbi & Joho, 2022;Kanu et al, 2014;Chembe & Siziya, 2017) revealed that mothers who had a higher educational level were more likely to have good PNC knowledge compared to those who had a lower educational level. The two studies that reported on the association between the educational level of the father and the mother's PNC knowledge (Hassen & Lelisho, 2022;Yitayew et al, 2021), revealed that mothers who had partners with a higher educational level were more likely to have good PNC knowledge compared to those whose partners had a lower educational level.…”

“…The other determinants of PNC knowledge reported in this review include the number of previous pregnancies (Beraki et al, 2020;Yaya Tessema, et al, 2023;Leta, 2022;Berhan & Gulema, 2018;Mose et al, 2021;Kebede et al, 2020;Yitayew et al, 2021;Roney et al, 2021;Kanu et al, 2014;Meseka et al, 2017), whether the pregnancy was planned or not (Hassen & Lelisho, 2022;Kebede et al, 2020), family size (Tesfaye et al, 2022), whether the woman stayed with the father of the baby (Tesfaye et al, 2022;Nchimbi & Joho, 2022), involvement of the father of the baby in PNC activities (Kebede et al, 2020;Roney, et al, 2021), and whether the woman had self-decision making power to seek care for herself and her baby (Yaya Tessema et al, 2023). All the studies that reported on the number of pregnancies as a determinant of PNC knowledge (Beraki et al, 2020;Yaya Tessema et al, 2023;Leta, 2022;Berhan & Gulema, 2018;Mose et al, 2021;Kebede et al, 2020;Yitayew et al, 2021;Roney et al, 2021;Kanu et al, 2014) revealed that women who had more children were more likely to have PNC knowledge compared to those who had fewer, except for one (Meseka et al, 2017) that revealed that primiparous women were more likely to have good PNC knowledge compared to multiparous women. The two studies that reported on the influence of pregnancy planning on PNC knowledge (Hassen & Lelisho, 2022;Kebede et al, 2020) revealed that women who had planned their pregnancies were more likely to have good PNC knowledge compared to those whose pregnancies were not planned.…”

“…In addition, two studies (Kebede et al, 2020;Roney, et al, 2021) reported that women whose partners were involved in PNC activities were more likely to have good PNC knowledge compared to those whose partners were not involved. One study (Yaya Tessema et al, 2023) reported that women who had self-decision-making power to seek care for themselves and their babies were more likely to have good PNC knowledge compared to those who did not.…”