Magnitude of husbands' involvement in skilled birth attendant service utilization in Deder town, Oromiya, Ethiopia

Husbands' involvement strategies are employed to support their wives to access care, address the influence of gender inequality on maternal and newborn health, and promote husbands' positive involvement as fathers. Yet, evidence of the husbands' involvement in skilled birth attendant service utilization in Ethiopia is scarce, which limits the facility to improve institutional delivery services. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the magnitude of husbands' involvement in skilled birth attendant service utilization among fathers of children of less than one year in Deder town, Oromiya, Ethiopia.

A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted using a structured questionnaire among 399 fathers selected by a simple random sampling technique. Data were collected through face-to-face interview from March 24 to April 20, 2021. Data entry was done by Epi-data version-4.2 and analyzed with SPSS version-21. Descriptive statistics used frequency, mean and median and presented by tables and figures. The level of significance was set at p-value ≤0.05 for multivariable logistic regression and an adjusted odds ratio with a 95% confidence interval was used to measure the degree of statistical significance of dependent and independent variables.

The prevalence of husbands' involvement in skilled birth attendant service utilization was 84.2%. The age group of 25 to 29 years (AOR = 2.63, CI: 1.124-6.142), prior knowledge of skilled-delivery attendants (AOR = 2.75, CI: 1.456-5.205) and good attitude towards skilled birth attendants (AOR =2.46, CI: 1.227-4.948) were statistically significant determinants of husbands' involvement in skilled birth attendants service utilization.

This study revealed that the husbands' involvement in skilled birth attendants was high. Age, level of knowledge and attitude were the significant determinants of husbands' involvement in promoting skilled-delivery attendants. Therefore, improving husbands' level of knowledge and attitude towards skilled birth attendants is needed.