Abstract:

Background: Antenatal care (ANC) is a key strategy to improve maternal and infant health. Early and frequent antenatal care attendance during pregnancy is important to identify and mitigate risk factors in pregnancy. However, many pregnant women in Tanzania start antenatal care attendance late, particularly adolescent pregnant women. Therefore, they do not fully benefit from its preventive and curative services.

Methods: This was a prospective cross-sectional study which aimed at assessing the knowledge on the importance of early antenatal visits, attitude and practice of pregnant women at Bugando Medical hospital. Every woman at the time of data collection who consented and met the inclusion criteria was recruited through convenient sampling and questionnaire was completed. The study was carried out between September and October 2021.
The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20 software for windows was used to analyze the data. Ethical approval to conduct the study was granted by the directorate for research and innovation at CUHAS Bugando.

Results: A total of 200 women were enrolled. Among those pregnancy women, 6(3%) attended ANC once, 12(6%) attended twice, 23(11.5%) attended three times, 27(13.5%) attended four times and 65(53.7%) attended more than four times. About 194(97.0%) pregnant women understood the importance of early antenatal visits, 26(13%) of pregnant women reported the number of antenatal visits less than 4, 41 (20.5%) pregnant women reported the number of antenatal visits as 4 and 13 (65.5%) women reported the number of antenatal visits is more than 4.148 (74%) pregnant women knew the danger signs during pregnancy.

Conclusion: Despite many pregnant women knowing the importance of early antenatal visits and the total number of antenatal visits, they are still uncertain about the time to start visiting the antenatal clinics and number of visits needed. Majority of the pregnant women understood the obstetric danger signs during pregnancy.

Recommendations: Knowledge about Focused antenatal care and obstetric danger signs during pregnancy should be given to the community not only in the antenatal clinics but also through other means such as mass media communication, religious gatherings, village meetings so as to improve attitude and practice about antenatal care.