High risk fertility behaviour and health facility delivery in West Africa
Budu, Eugene, Ahinkorah, Bright Opoku, Okyere, Joshua, Seidu, Abdul-Aziz, Aboagye, Richard Gyan, and Yaya, Sanni (2023) High risk fertility behaviour and health facility delivery in West Africa. BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, 23. 842.
|
PDF (Published Version)
- Published Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (1MB) | Preview |
Abstract
Background: Evidence suggests that women who give birth in a health facility have lower odds of experiencing pregnancy complications and significantly reduced risk of death from pregnancy-related causes compared to women who deliver at home. Establishing the association between high-risk fertility behaviour (HRFB) and health facility delivery is imperative to inform intervention to help reduce maternal mortality. This study examined the association between HRFB and health facility delivery in West Africa.
Methods: Data for the study were extracted from the most recent Demographic and Health Surveys of twelve countries in West Africa conducted from 2010 to 2020. A total of 69,479 women of reproductive age (15–49 years) were included in the study. Place of delivery was the outcome variable in this study. Three parameters were used as indicators of HRFB based on previous studies. These were age at first birth, short birth interval, and high parity. Multivariable binary logistic regression analysis was performed to examine the association between HRFB and place of delivery and the results were presented using crude odds ratio (cOR) and adjusted odds ratio (aOR), with their respective 95% confidence interval (CI).
Results: More than half (67.64%) of the women delivered in a health facility. Women who had their first birth after 34 years (aOR = 0.52; 95% CI = 0.46–0.59), those with short birth interval (aOR = 0.91; 95% CI = 0.87–0.96), and those with high parity (aOR = 0.58; 95% CI = 0.55–0.60) were less likely to deliver in a health compared to those whose age at first delivery was 18-34 years, those without short birth interval, and those with no history of high parity, respectively. The odds of health facility delivery was higher among women whose first birth occurred at an age less than 18 years compared to those whose age at first birth was 18-34 years (aOR = 1.17; 95% CI = 1.07–1.28).
Conclusion: HRFB significantly predicts women's likelihood of delivering in a health facility in West Africa. Older age at first birth, shorter birth interval, and high parity lowered women’s likelihood of delivering in a health facility. To promote health facility delivery among women in West Africa, it is imperative for policies and interventions on health facility delivery to target at risk sub-populations (i.e., multiparous women, those with shorter birth intervals and women whose first birth occurs at older maternal age). Contraceptive use and awareness creation on the importance of birth spacing should be encouraged among women of reproductive age in West Africa.
Item ID: | 81415 |
---|---|
Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
ISSN: | 1471-2393 |
Keywords: | Delivery, Fertility behaviour, Health facility, Health risk, West Africa |
Copyright Information: | © The Author(s) 2023. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
Research Data: | https://dhsprogram.com/data/available-datasets.cfm |
Date Deposited: | 11 Mar 2024 23:02 |
FoR Codes: | 42 HEALTH SCIENCES > 4206 Public health > 420606 Social determinants of health @ 100% |
SEO Codes: | 20 HEALTH > 2004 Public health (excl. specific population health) > 200401 Behaviour and health @ 100% |
Downloads: |
Total: 17 Last 12 Months: 9 |
More Statistics |