Access and Utilization of Antenatal Care Services among Pregnant Women in Uganda: A Case Study of Uganda

Abstract

Antenatal care contributes to good pregnancy outcomes and often times benefits of antenatal care are dependent on the timing and quality of the care provided. Antenatal care is necessary to establish confidence between the woman and her health care provider, to individualize health promotion messages, and to identify and manage any maternal complications or risk factors. In low and middle income countries, complications of pregnancy and childbirth are the leading cause of death in women aged 15–19 years. This study aimed at investigating the access and utilization of Antenatal Care services among the pregnant women in Uganda. Hence the study analyzed ANC utilization in Uganda using a sample of 8476 women data set from Uganda Demographic and Health surveys (UDHS, 2011) and data was analyzed at univariate and bivariate levels. The research analyzed the influence of the different independent factors among women of reproductive age groups (15-49) years within the country on ANC utilization. These factors included; age of respondents, education level, residence, wealth index, source of ANC, region, religion and marital status. The majority of women that were interviewed were aged 15-19 years 23.6 percent. Among women that were interviewed, majority were from the rural with 80.2 percent. Most of the respondents had gone through primary and had their percentage as (59.4%). Majority of them were Catholics (40.6%). The majority of women that were interviewed were currently in union at 62.5 percent, belonged to the richer households (25.9%), were from central region (41.1%) attended ANC (95.7%) from government facilities (66.1%) At the second level analysis at the second level, chi square tests were used to establish the relationship between dependent and independent variables, a highly significant relationship was found to exist between utilization of ANC and all independent variables with the exception of marital status, place of attending ANC and religion. It was found that, age, education attainment, wealth index, type of place of respondents, and region were significant with p-value <0.005. The recommendations of the study were: the researcher implores the government to work on roads and construction of more health centers so as to improve on the time taken to reach the health centers. Also the government needs to employ more health workers in the health centers