Quality of Antenatal Care Services for Adolescents and Adult Pregnant Women in Mbagathi and Pumwani Hospitals (a Comparative Cross Sectional Study)

Abstract

Background: antenatal care (anc) is depicted as the care given by health care professionals to a client when they visit a health care facility during the period of pregnancy. the world health organization (who) defines quality of care as “the degree to which health services for individuals and populations increase the likelihood of desired health outcomes and are consistent with current professional knowledge”. in sub-saharan africa adolescents who were pregnant experienced very poor maternal health care when compared to adult pregnant women with the same comparable characteristics. there is paucity of data on quality of antenatal care between this two groups in kenya. this study therefore aims to bring out the gaps bycomparing the experiences of both the adolescents and adult pregnant mothers in mbagathi and pumwani hospitals in the antenatal clinics. an outlook on their sociodemographics together with the anc attendance with the specific anc services offered will shed more light to this topic. objective:to compare the quality of antenatal care between adolescents and adult pregnant women in mbagathi and pumwani hospitals. methodology: a comparative cross sectional study design of 115 adults and 66 adolescent parturients was done at mbagathi hospital and pumwani maternity hospital. eligible participants were enrolled after signing the informed consent and after ethical approval from the knh/uon ethics review committee, and the pumwani and mbagathi level iv hospital research committees. a pre-tested structured interviewer-administered questionnaire was used to obtain the relevant data and entered into a password protected excel sheet for cleaning before analysis using spss software. descriptive statistics on the socio demographic characteristics across the two groups was computed and presented as proportions. bivariate analysis using chi-square test or the man whitney u test were used to determine the association between independent variables and dependent variables and ancova and logistic regression analyses used to control confounding. results: adults were 20.5 times likely to be married and 11.7 times more likely to have a planned pregnancy than adolescents, p<0.05. education and place of previous deliver of adolescents and youths did not vary statistically, p>0.05. uptake of anc services was high but better among adults that adolescents. adults, were 9.3, 13.5, 4.4, and 2.8 times more likely to undergo hemoglobin, urinalysis, blood grouping and blood sugar tests than adolescents, p<0.05.

moreover, adults were 6.7 times and 4.4 times more likely to get a delivery plan and have an ultrasound before 24 weeks gestation. only 8.8% of participants and did not vary significantly between adolescents and adults, p=0.12. perceived quality of anc services did not vary statistically among adolescents and adults after controlling confounding. education level and the types of hospital were predictors, p<0.05.