Investigating Knowledge and Determinants of Birth Preparedness among Pregnant Women in Mangochi District

Birth preparedness (BP) has been globally endorsed as an essential component of safe motherhood programs to reduce delays for care, so as to reduce maternal and neonatal mortality rate. In spite of the benefit of BP, no study has been documented that assessed the knowledge and determinants of birth preparedness in Mangochi District, Malawi. Therefore, this study aimed at investigating knowledge and determinants of BP among pregnant women attending antenatal clinic in Mangochi District, South-east Malawi.

A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted involving 382 respondents for the quantitative component and five focus group discussions for the qualitative component. Simple random sampling was used to select respondents in the study area for quantitative data collection while purposive sampling was used for focus group participants. A researcher-administered questionnaire was used to collect quantitative data.

A total of 382 mothers participated, achieving a response rate of 99.5%. Majority of women (97.6%) had heard about BP. Of the total mothers, 73.3% had adequate knowledge on birth preparedness. However, from the focus group discussion conducted, pregnant mothers pointed out communication as a barrier in accessing health care services as most of the health care workers could not communicate to them in Yao, which is the dominant local language in the study area. Among the factors associated with birth preparedness were religion (r=-0.013, p<0.05), maternal education (r=-0.017, p<0.05), maternal occupation (r=-0.044, p<0.05) and husband occupation (r=-0.000, p<0.05) showed statistically significant association.

About 73 % of pregnant women in this study had adequate knowledge in birth preparedness. The factors most associated with birth preparedness were maternal and husband occupation, maternal education and religion. There is a need to continue providing health education on birth preparedness to all women in the reproductive age band.