Level of and factors associated with awareness of gestational diabetes mellitus among pregnant women attending antenatal care at Kawempe National Referral Hospital: a cross sectional study

Abstract

Background The burden of Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is significantly increasing worldwide and the disorder causes substantial short term and long-term adverse effects both to the mother and the unborn baby. Public health measures to increase awareness of GDM among pregnant women may aid in prevention of the disease through life style modification, screening, early diagnosis and management but very few studies have assessed awareness of GDM among pregnant women in sub Saharan Africa and none of these are from Uganda. This study therefore sought to evaluate the level of and factors associated with awareness of GDM among pregnant women attending antenatal care at Kawempe National Referral Hospital (KNRH), the busiest obstetric unit in Uganda, so as to assess their health sensitization needs. Methods This was a cross-sectional study. We recruited 403 participants at 30 weeks of gestation and above after giving written informed consent. Systematic sampling was used to select participants and data was collected using pretested interviewer-administered questionnaires. The collected data was entered in Epidata version 4.2 and exported to Stata for analysis. Continuous variables were summarized using mean and standard deviation. Categorical variables were summarized using frequencies and proportions. Factors associated with awareness were assessed at both bivariate and multivariate levels. Results Four hundred three pregnant women were recruited, majority (35.5 %) were between 20 and 24 years and their mean age was 26.6 years. Only 125 (31 %) participants were aware of GDM. Age and educational level were significantly associated with awareness of GDM. Women aged 35 years and above were more likely to be aware of GDM (OR = 2.34 (95 % CI = 1.14–4.81) p = 0.021. Women with primary education or no education were less likely to be aware (OR = 0.48 (CI 0.24–0.96) p = 0.038. Conclusions Awareness of GDM was poor among study participants. There is need to improve the health education programs in order to increase awareness of GDM among women attending ANC at KNRH. Women below 35 years of age and those with primary education or less should be specifically targeted when giving health education sessions so as to increase their awareness of GDM.

Gestational Diabetes Mellitus: A Cross-Sectional Survey of Its Knowledge and Associated Factors among United Arab Emirates University Students

“…GDM knowledge status in our study population is similar to the study conducted among adult women in Sharjah, where 73.5% have heard about GDM before [27]. However, it is lower than the Bangladeshi study, where 81.8% of participants were aware of GDM [21], and higher than in many studies conducted in different parts of India, Nigeria, Samoa, and Uganda [23,28,32,33,35,36]. Most of these studies were conducted among pregnant women, who were expected to be more aware of the condition than our study population.…”

“…Significant associated factors of knowledge levels in this study (after multiple regression) include being married and knowing someone who had GDM. Many studies [23,24,28,37] highlighted age and educational status as predictors of GDM knowledge levels, but this is not the case in our study. The Saudi study [26], on the other hand, supports our study's finding that knowing someone who had GDM is positively associated with knowledge levels.…”

“…In the UAE, a study conducted in 2017 among 450 women of childbearing age showed good awareness of GDM (73.5%); however, their knowledge levels were low [ 27 ]. Regarding associated factors, studies show that women who are older [ 24 , 28 ], have more pregnancies [ 23 ], and are employed [ 21 ] were significantly more aware and had a higher knowledge level of GDM. Ethnicity and educational status were also found to be predictors of GDM knowledge levels [ 28 , 29 , 30 ].…”

“…Regarding associated factors, studies show that women who are older [ 24 , 28 ], have more pregnancies [ 23 ], and are employed [ 21 ] were significantly more aware and had a higher knowledge level of GDM. Ethnicity and educational status were also found to be predictors of GDM knowledge levels [ 28 , 29 , 30 ]. One study found that males had significantly higher knowledge scores than females [ 21 ].…”

Pregnancy-related complications and associated factors among women attending antenatal care at a specialised maternal and child health national referral hospital, in Uganda

“…The hospital runs ANC clinics three times in a week with an average daily attendance of between 200 to 300 pregnant women. Standard ANC package including prenatal ultrasonography is provided to all mothers, and high-risk mothers are offered special investigations such as genetic testing or biophysical profiling (17).…”