Abstract:
Background: The maternity continuum of care is the continuity of maternal health care services that a woman uses antenatal care, skill birth attendant, and postnatal care. It is a critical strategy for reducing maternal and newborn mortality and morbidity. Despite this, Millions of women around the globe still do not receive the maternal health care services they need to survive pregnancy and succeed.
Objective: the objective of this study was to assess the completion of maternity continuum of care and associated factors among women who gave birth in the last 12 months in Debre Berhan Town, North Shewa, Amhara, Ethiopia, 2020.
Methods: a community-based cross-sectional study was conducted from February 17-March 15/2020 and cluster sampling was used for the selection of respondents. Data were collected through face to face interviews with pre-tested structured questionnaires by trained data collectors. Data were entered into Epi-data software version 3.1 and then exported to SPSS version 21 statistical package for analysis. Logistic regression was performed to analyze the data. In multivariable analysis, a significant association was declared a p-value of less than 0.05 to determine factors associated with the completion of the maternity continuum of care.
Results: A total of 659 participants were found from the selected clusters for this study and 647 were interviewed. In this study, the proportion of women who completed the maternity continuum of care was 37.2% with 95% CI (33.4-41.1). In the multivariable logistic regression analysis, completing primary education (AOR: 2.732, 95% CI: 1.169-6.383), secondary education (AOR: 3.106, 95% CI: 1.320-7.308), college and above educational level(AOR: 4.149, 95% CI: 1.798-9.572), initiation of first ANC visit ≤16wks(AOR: 2.566, 95% CI: 1.407-4.682), knowing pregnancy danger signs(AOR: 1.914, 95% CI: 1.147-3.195), and well prepared on birth and complication readiness (AOR: 1.598, 95% CI: 1.101-2.320) were positively associated with the completion of maternity continuum of care.
Conclusion and recommendations: The proportion of women who complete the maternity continuum of care was low in Debre Berhan town. Therefore, due attention should be given to those factors that positively associated with the completion of maternity continuum of care such as maternal education, advising on pregnancy danger signs, initiation of ANC at ≤16wks and birth preparedness and complication readiness plan.
