Poor knowledge of
socio-demographic factors limit access and utilization of health care services
among pregnant women. The objectives of this paper are to examine the factors
which influence health care usage and to suggest policy guidelines to boost the
use of healthcare particularly among antenatal women. The study covers five (5)
rural political wards of Ado-Odo/Ota Local Government Area in Ogun State,
Nigeria. A
stratified sampling technique was adopted in selecting the respondents who were
ever married women in child bearing age (15-49) years who had at least one
live-birth in the last three years preceding the survey. Stratified sampling technique was
employed because the study was based on different political wards. It enabled
more consistent responses within each political ward. This technique consists
in taking random samples within each selected ward and combining it with
samples proportionate to the size of each ward to ensure representative of the
population for wider generalization of findings. On
the whole, 260 female respondents were randomly selected from five wards out of
the sixteen wards. Data were gathered through questionnaire instrument
and analyzed statistically using statistical package
for social sciences. Regression analysis showed that treatment decision
and distance to health facility are negatively related to health program usage
by pregnant mothers. Educational attainments, payment of treatment bills,
respondent’s age and husband’s perception about pregnancy are positively associated
to antennal care (ANC) use. Also,
since the F- statistics calculated is greater than the F- tabulated thereby
validating the hypothesis that the socio-demographic characteristics of the
respondents are significantly related to the health program usage by pregnant
mothers. The above findings show that education, husband’s perception about
pregnancy, treatment decision and payment of treatment cost weigh more on the
use of modern health care services. Hence,
Costs
alleviation for women seeking antenatal care and delivery services should be
put in place to encourage women to use health services and government should
give priority to women education and empowerment. In addition, effort should be
made to revitalize rural health facilities and establish mid-way service
delivery points to reduce the problem of distance.
Journal Section | Articles |
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Authors | |
Publication Date | December 27, 2017 |
Submission Date | October 1, 2017 |
Published in Issue | Year 2017Volume: 3 Issue: 9 |
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