Effect of antenatal education on knowledge and utilization of facility-based delivery services among pregnant women in two health institutions in Alimosho, Lagos state

ABSTRACT

Background: Facility-based delivery care is an essential component of maternity care. Overtime, its under-utilization despite improvement in antenatal attendance has become a public health concern in Nigeria. To assess the effect of antenatal education on the knowledge and utilization of facility-based delivery services among pregnant women in primary health facilities in Alimosho, Lagos.Methods: Quasi-experimental design of 2 groups pre- and post-intervention was adopted and through multi-staged sampling techniques, 128 participants were selected but 117 completed the study. Self-developed structured questionnaire with reliability index of 0.76 was used for data collection. The intervention package was antenatal education package on benefits and components of delivery services. Data were analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 23 statistical package.Results: The mean age of participants in control and experimental groups was 32.3±9.60 and 34.7±8.21 years respectively. Findings revealed moderate knowledge mean score (control- 54.97±10.52; experimental-52.14±11.09) and low pre-intervention utilization mean score (control 13.33±3.41; experimental-13.17±4.21). Findings also showed significant improvement on post-intervention mean knowledge score of 52.14±11.09 versus 104.75±5.56 and a significant difference in post-intervention utilization (p=0.000) and follow-up (p=0.013) on the experimental group.Conclusions: The study concluded that the antenatal education programme had positive effect on the pregnant women’s knowledge and utilization of health facility delivery services, therefore, there is need to strengthen and intensify antenatal education at all levels of healthcare using appropriate teaching techniques.