The impact of Antenatal attendance on the prevalence of Malaria among expectant mothers of Nawanyago Health centre III Kamuli District - Uganda.DA

Abstract

The Impact of Antenatal Attendance on the Prevalence of Malaria among Expectant Mothers of Nawanyago Health Centre III Kamuli District- Uganda. The specific objectives were; evaluate the relevance of the Health education package administered to the expectant mothers at the clinic and establish the relationship between spread of malaria in the sub-county and socio demographic, mosquito net use and antenatal visits. A total of 120 expectant mothers were randomly selected from a list before stratified by area of residence (urban and rural) and requested to participate in the study. All people residing in any part of the country were eligible respondents provided they consent. There was a high percentage of malaria positive cases among expectant mothers who doesn’t use mosquito nets compared to those who use mosquito nets (32.56% Vs 27.63%). However this was not statistically significant. There was a significant difference in the proportion of MRDT reactive cases based on the number of antenatal visits (P value 0.047). Among 35 MRDT reactive cases, malaria was highest among those who hadn’t had any previous antenatal visit and constituted 16/35 (46%) of the MRDT reactive cases. From this study, mothers who had at least one antenatal visit were above 50% less likely to have malaria compared to those who never had any prior antenatal visit. Correspondingly, those with 1, 2 and 3 ANT visits had about 60%, 78% and 72% less likeliness of having malaria with Odds ratios (0.395, 0.225 and 0.281 respectively). It was recommended that; More effort is required to sensitize expectant mothers and encourage them to go for antenatal visits and always to use insecticide treated mosquito nets. Campaigns should be carried out to encourage behavioral change especially on the use of insecticide treated mosquito nets.