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Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Pregnant Mothers towards Preventions of Iron Deficiency Anemia in Ethiopia: Institutional Based Cross Sectional Study

Abdu Oumer and Arif Hussein

Background: Globally 56 million (41.8%) of pregnant women had anemia. Low maternal risk perception, poor dietary practice and low adherence to iron tablets among pregnant women are major contributors for high burden of anaemia. Thus the level of maternal awareness and attitude towards dietary and other prevention practices of anaemia are not well established in the study area.

Objectives: To assess the knowledge, attitude and practice of pregnant mother towards the prevention of iron deficiency anaemia in Ethiopia, 2018.

Methods: This is institutional based cross sectionals study conducted on randomly selected, 128 pregnant mothers attending antenatal care service in Harar town. Data was collected by health professionals using pre tested questionnaire containing socio demographic, knowledge, attitude and practice related questions. Good and poor knowledge was scored by coding the correct answers as one. Attitude questions were organized in five likert scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree using positive statements. Similarly practices were assessed in yes/no (appropriate practices were scored as yes or no otherwise). The three indicators were transformed in to categories using the mea score as cut off point. Data was analysed using SPSS version 20 using frequency, tables, graphs and means. Pearson correlation with r was used to assess the relationship between knowledge, attitude and practice. ANOVA was used to compare the mean practice by different factors.

Results: Total of 128 mothers were interviewed with mean age of 26.3 (SD=5.8 y). Overall, 61% (95% CI: 52.6% to 69.5%) of pregnant women had a good knowledge on prevention methods of IDA. More than half, 52.3% (95% CI: 43.7% to 61.0%) had favorable attitude towards prevention of IDA. While majority of pregnant women, 58.6% (95% CI: 50.1% to 67.1%) had poor adherence to prevention practice of IDA.

Conclusion and recommendations: Knowledge, attitude and practice of pregnant women on preventions of IDA are not satisfactory. Thus poor practice towards prevention of IDA are the main contributing factor for high burden of anemia. Generally there should be focused, simple, easy to understand and customer friendly counseling service at ANC facilities.