Journal of Pregnancy and Child Health
Open Access

Research Article

A Cross-Sectional Study of Antenatal Care Attendance among Pregnant Women in Western Jamaica

Ebony Townsend Respress¹, Pauline E. Jolly^1*, Chinye Osia¹, Nichole Dawson Williams¹, Swati Sakhuja¹, Suzanne E Judd², Maung Aung³ and April P Carson¹

¹Department of Epidemiology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA

²Department of Biostatistics, University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA

³WEpidemiology and Research Unit, Western Regional Health Authority, Ministry of Health, Jamaica

*Corresponding Author:

Pauline E. Jolly
Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health
University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA
Tel: 2059341823
E-mail: jollyp@uab.edu

Received date: July 06, 2017; Accepted date: July 24, 2017; Published date: July 31, 2017

Citation: Respress ET, Jolly PE, Osia C, Williams ND, Sakhuja S, et al. (2017) A Cross-Sectional Study of Antenatal Care Attendance among Pregnant Women in Western Jamaica. J Preg Child Health 4:341. doi:10.4172/2376-127X.1000341

Copyright: © 2017 Respress ET, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

Background: Pregnancy complications are preventable with appropriate antenatal care (ANC). However, ANC attendance recommendations vary. Objective: This study investigated ANC practices and predictors of ANC visits among pregnant women in western Jamaica during 2010. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 356 pregnant women. ANC visits were categorized as not meeting recommendations (<4 ANC visits), meeting WHO recommendations only (4-6 ANC visits) or meeting previous standard recommendation of ≥7 visits. Differences in demographic factors, health status, ANC services received and ANC knowledge by ANC attendance were assessed and a multinomial forward-selection stepwise logistic regression model used to identify predictors of ANC attendance. Results: Most women had an adequate number of ANC visits with 53.4% Jamaican ANC standards and 27.2% attending 4-6 visits. Despite this, 19.4% of the women had inadequate ANC care and a large portion did not receive key ANC services such as folic acid supplementation (48%), information on breastfeeding (32%) and nutrition (13%). Employment status, number of live births, distance from clinic, history of diabetes or hypertension, possession of ANC card at delivery, receiving iron supplementation and HIV counseling and testing and antenatal care knowledge were predictors of ANC visits. Conclusion: Although most women met the WHO or Jamaican ANC recommendations, many women still did not receive key ANC services. Further investigation of ANC practices and a standardized ANC curriculum may improve provision of adequate ANC services.  

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