Abstract:
Background: Postnatal care service is a fundamental element of maternal health service. Proper timing of postnatal care services is a crucial step towards reduction of maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality in Ethiopia. However, timing of first postnatal check for the newborn is still lower in Ethiopia. Beside the problem there is inadequate information on the timing of uptake of postnatal care services in Ethiopia.
Objective: To assess the prevalence and examine the determinants of 1st PNC use by newborns.
Methodology: Secondary data from Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey 2016 was used. By design EDHS 2016 is a cross-sectional survey. For this study 4308 women age 15-49 that gave birth in the 2 years before the survey were included. Data extraction and analysis were done using STATA version 14. Bivariate logistic regression undertaken to evaluate the degree of association between determinant factor and PNC and multivariable undertaken to investigate for any confounder. Crude and Adjusted Odds ratio with 95% confidence intervals used.
Result: Among 4,308 women age 15-49, 13.2% newborns received a postnatal check during the first 2days of their birth. The results indicate that Region, Women educational level, Wealth, Place of delivery, birth order and Perceived distance to health facility were significant predictors of PNC utilization for the newborn. The result further indicated that of PNC utilization of newborns for women who have two to four and 5 and above children were 2.6 times [AOR=2.59, 95% CI (1.40 – 4.79)] more likely to utilize postnatal care than those women who have one child.
Conclusion and recommendation: women’s education, household livelihood improvement, accessing the PNC service in the nearby health facility are basic steps undertaken as an action to enhance the first PNC uptake of newborns.
....................................... Thesis available at ACIPH Library