Sodere Nurgi, Erdaw Tachbele, Wondwosen Dibekulu and Mulugeta Aseratie Wondim
Background: Pregnancy danger signs are the major health problems and cause of mortality among women in developing countries. Majority (99%) of maternal death occurred in developing countries from the total of 529,000 mothers’ death. Objective: To assess knowledge, attitude and practice of mothers towards obstetric danger signs during pregnancy in Debre Birhan, Ethiopia. Methods and findings: A community based crosssectional quantitative study was conducted in April,2014, on a sample of 634 mothers who were at least 4 months of gestational age for primi-gravid and any mother who had delivered in the past 24 months before the data collection time. The response rate was 99.7%. The response of participants was analysed using SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Science) window version 20.0. Odds ratio calculated within 95% of confidence interval has been used to test the associations between variables. Multiple logistic-regressions were also used to adjust for possible confounding variables. About three fourth (76.7%) of the participants were urban residents. Most (68.2%) of the study participants were found to have poor knowledge. Respondents who got obstetric danger signs information from media had 2.8 times good knowledge than those respondents who didn’t get information from the same source [AOR=2.8, 95%CI (Confidence Interval) (1.7- 4.65)]. About 52.7% of the study participants had negative attitude. Participants who had formal education have 2.2 times positive attitude than participants who had informal education [AOR=2.2, 95% CI (1.1- 4.4)]. Of all 51(8.1%) who had experienced obstetric danger signs 44 of them had good practice of managing danger signs. Conclusion: Despite this study have revealed majority of the participants who had obstetric danger signs had good practice, the overall participants’ knowledge and attitude still needs intervention to maximize their knowledge and lean-to them with positive attitude.
