Abstract:
Background: Maternal delays in utilization of emergency obstetric care are the contributing factors for high maternal morbidity and mortality in developing countries. Although maternity waiting home promotes the delivery of obstetric health care service for mothers. There were limited studies on magnitude of utilization of maternity waiting home and contributed factors through community based study. Objectives: The study aims to assess maternity waiting home utilization and its associated factors among mothers who gave birth in the last 12 months, in Angolela Tera District, Amhara Regional State, Ethiopia, 2020.
Methods: A community based cross sectional study design was employed among 522 mothers who gave birth in the last 12 months from February10 to March11, 2020. Multistage cluster sampling technique was used to select the sample size. Data were collected by face to face interview at household level. It was then entered into Epi data version 3.1 and exported to SPSS version 21. Variables which had p-values < 0.2 in the binary logistic analysis were entered in to multi-variable analysis. P-value < 0.05 was considered as statistically significant.
Result: A total of 522 study participants were involved with response rate of 100%. In this study, utilization of maternity waiting home was 24.9%. About 42% of mothers attended primary level education and 70.30% of mothers were house wives. Being house wife AOR=4.5(95% CI:1.41,12.21), primary level of education AOR=3.99(95% CI:1.27,12.57), 4thantenatal care follow up history AOR=12.85(95% CI:4.93,33.50), decision making power AOR=3.48(95% CI:1.47,8.24), knowledge on the use of maternity waiting home AOR=8.66(95% CI: 3.57,21.02) complication history AOR=21.46(95% CI:8.14,56.62) were associated with maternity waiting home utilization.
Conclusion and Recommendation: Utilization of maternity waiting home was lower than most national and international studies. The study implied that factors such as: being house wives, level of education, number of antenatal care visits, decision making power, knowledge towards maternity waiting home , obstetric complication history were found to influence the utilization of services. Thus, it needs to be promoted and practiced by taking measures on the affecting factors that prevent its utilization. Studies on health professional’s attitude on maternity waiting home also required.
