Assessment of Knowledge and Associated Factors towards Congenital Anomalies among Pregnant Women Visiting Antenatal Care Clinic at Arba Minch General Hospital, Gamo Zone, Southern Ethiopia

Abstract

Knowledge of Congenital anomalies (CAs) among the public, especially reproductive age women have a significant role in reducing the incidence. However, there is a dearth of studies conducted on this issue in our country. This study was aimed to assess the pregnant women’s knowledge of CAs at the antenatal care clinic of Arba Minch General Hospital. Institution based cross-sectional study was conducted between December 2017 and September 2018. Semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect the data. Data were cleaned, entered and analysed by using SPSS version- 20 software packages. Besides descriptive statistics, Bi-variate and Multi-variate logistic regression analyses were done to explore the predictors of women’s level of knowledge
toward CAs. P-value < 0.05 was considered as statistically significant. A total of 392 pregnant women had participated in the present study. From total respondents, only 11.0% of the pregnant women have known that many of CAs are of genetic origin, and a significant proportion of the women had believed that CA is a disease acquired by pregnant women (39.0%), and it occurs in a baby due to the sin of families (48.5%). Only 189 (48.2%) women had adequate overall knowledge about CAs. The participants had good knowledge of the risk factors than their specific knowledge of CAs. The level of education and occupation were significantly associated (P<0.05) with the women’s overall knowledge of CAs. In conclusion, the women’s knowledge of CAs in this study was found less. Appropriate strategies should be designed and implemented to improve women’s knowledge of congenital anomalies.