Kalayou K Berhe, Haftom G Welearegay, Gerezgiher B Abera1, Hailemariam B Kahsay and Alemayehu B Kahsay
Objective was to assess ante natal care utilization and its associated factors among 15 to 49 years of age women in Ayder Kebelle, Mekelle city 2012/2013. Community based cross sectional study design was conducted, interviewer administer questionnaire was used to collect the data. Pre-test was done for assuring data quality, the study population was all child bearing women in Ayder kebelle. Systematic random sampling technique was employed to select the intended study subjects. Sample size was 252 and bivariate logistic regression analysis was computed to interpret and identify factors associated with antenatal care utilization. OR using 95% confidence interval and p- value were calculated. Data entry, cleaning and analyzing were done by using SPSS version16 statistical software. The study revealed that about 88.9% of the women had at least one antenatal visit during their recent pregnancy. Almost half of the antenatal care (44.2%) attendants made their first visit during their second and third trimester of pregnancy. Among antenatal care users around 84.8% had four and above antenatal care contacts. The main reasons for non-attendance at antenatal care clinic were related to being in good health and poor quality of service. It was also observed that non-attendance was higher for those with unplanned pregnancy, low knowledge of unhealthy pregnancy and those whose husband or partner’s attitude to antenatal care attendance were negative. In conclusion the study revealed that Socio demographic factors were found to be barriers to utilization of antenatal care services and the overall antenatal care utilization is higher 88.9%.
