Correlates of Utilization of Antenatal Care Services among Pregnant Women in a Tertiary Hospital in South-South Nigeria

Access to quality healthcare still remains a major challenge in the efforts at reversing maternal morbidity and mortality. Despite the availability of established maternal health interventions, the health of the expectant mother and the unborn child remains poor due to low utilization interventions. The study aimed to identify the patterns and determinants of antenatal care services utilization among pregnant women in University of Benin Teaching Hospital (UBTH) in Edo State, using pregnant women between the ages of 15-49 years irrespective of their gestational age. Simple random sampling technique was adopted and 384 pregnant women were used. Questionnaire was the instrument used to collect data from respondents. Percentage, chi-square and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were used to analyze the data with the help of SPSS software. Majority of the respondents (40.2%) were aged 26-36 years; Christian (49.9%); had tertiary education (43.3%) and 30.9% were of the Esan ethnic group. In terms of income, 36.2% and 11% earn about 2,000,000 – 2,500,000 and 3,001,000 – 4,000,000 Naira annually respectively; most respondents (45.4%) come from a polygamous family and most (36.3%) have parity of 3-4; 47.8% of the women were married; 10.2% were Single. The results showed varying levels and patterns of utilization of Ante-Natal Care(ANC) Services which were mainly incongruous with WHO recommendations; chi-square analysis showed the pattern of utilization of ANC services was highly affected by Socio-cultural factors, distance, financial factors, long waiting hours and attitude of health workers; ANOVA result showed that there was significant difference in the pattern of utilization of ANC services between highly educated pregnant women compared to low educated pregnant women. Step up of interventions to channel resources in ensuring that the critical factors that tend to undermine the adequate utilization of ANC services among pregnant women are tackled.