Assessing essential new born care practice and associated factors in mothers who gave birth within the last 6 months in east badewacho woreda, hadiyya zone, Ethiopia

Abstract

Background: Every year, more than 2.7 million new-borns die before reaching neonatal age in the world, with the majority of these deaths occurring at home. Surprisingly, half of these occur within the first 24 hours of delivery, and 75% occur in the early neonatal period. One low-cost approach to improving new-born baby health outcomes is to promote essential new-born care practices. Objective: Thus, the purpose of this study was to evaluate essential new-born care practices and associated factors among mothers who gave birth within the last 6 months in East Badewacho woreda, Hadiyya zone. Methods: From March 1 to April 30, 2018, a community-based cross-sectional study was designed. The sampled population consisted of 399 mothers who had live births within the previous six months, as determined by a multistage random sampling technique. The data was collected using a semi-structured questionnaire and entered into Epi-data version 3.1 before being exported to SPSS version 21 for analysis. A binary logistic regression analysis with a 95% confidence interval was performed. Results: Less than half of the mothers (34.1 %) practice essential new-born care. The husband's educational status [AOR=0.24, CI (0.089, 0.64)] and [AOR=0.314, CI (0.126, 0.78)], place of delivery [AOR=0.024, CI (0.009, 0.068)] and knowledge of essential new-born care [AOR=2.03, CI (1.223,3.371)] were significant predictors of essential new-born care practice. Conclusion: The study's findings revealed that essential new-born care was not widely practiced in East Badewacho Woreda. As a result, strengthen the link between health centers and health posts in order to increase ANC, institutional delivery, and PNC service utilization.