| dc.description.abstract | Background; Pregnant mothers who initiate antenatal care late miss out on the chance of early diagnosis, treatment, prophylaxis and prevention of complications, health education on nutrition and danger signs to watch out during pregnancy. Many pregnant women initiate antenatal care late above 20 weeks of gestation however; the health facility and individual factors influencing late antenatal care late were not documented. Therefore, this study was intended to find out the socio economic, individual and health facility factors influencing late antenatal care seeking behavior at Kawolo General Hospital. Method; Descriptive cross sectional study was done on all pregnant women attending antenatal care during the study irrespective of their gestational age and whether it is their first visit or not using questionnaires. Data collected was analyzed using SPSS and results presented in tables. Results; The study included 100 participants who were interviewed in August 2015 at Kawolo General Hospital. Of these 98% had mean age of 27 years, 80% were married and 50% had attained secondary education. The pregnant mothers were mostly jobless (52%) and of their spouses were mostly business men (34%). Among them, 45% of these mothers made their first visit at < 20 weeks gestational age and 45% had knowledge on the recommended number of ANC visits, (62%) said that < 20 weeks of gestational age was the appropriate time to initiate ANC visit. Mothers mostly accessed the hospital using a taxi (40%), (46%) agreed that the transport fee was affordable, (87%) agreed that they do not pay for antenatal care services and (9%) said the payment for the services was not affordable. (68% agreed that they were satisfied with antenatal care services provided at the hospital.
Conclusion and recommendations; This study showed that most pregnant women still did not know the benefits of early initiation and frequent visits during antenatal care therefore there is still more need to educate all women about the importance early initiation and frequent visits for antenatal care services. This can be achieved through going to communities, schools, churches and mosques and use of Village Health Teams (VHT’s). Reinforcement of male partner involvement during ANC visits. Positive working environment should be create for the health, recruiting more health staff to reduce turnaround time and long waiting hours by pregnant mothers and creating more incentives like providing a drink to the mothers, putting television with interesting programs at the waiting area, giving maternity dresses to those who initiate early and creating resting areas where by they can lie down to rest while waiting and freely interacting with one another.
Key words; Late seeking, Antenatal care, parity and Kawolo General Hospital | en_US |
