Patterns of Prevention of Malaria in Pregnancy Among Pregnant Women at Selected Antenatal Care Facilities, Ilishan-Remo, Ogun State, Nigeria

Abstract:

Malaria in pregnancy is a preventable infectious disease, yet it remains the cause of maternal, in-utero morbidity and mortality. Pregnant women adopt different patterns of prevention against malaria occurrences and complications. This study aims to identify patterns of malaria prevention among pregnant women inIlishan Remo, Ogun State. In a descriptive cross-sectional study, a purposive sampling technique was used to proportionately select 271 pregnant women attending Ante-natal care (ANC) facilities. A self-administered questionnaire was used to obtained information on 56 items. Data were collected on clinic days for eight weeks duration and analyzed with SPSS 23 (for descriptive frequencies and percentages) and hypotheses tested with chi-square at p ≤ 0.005. One-third (35.4%) of the pregnant women aged 31-35years. Predominantly, 80.8% of the women were Christians, almost half (49.1%) had tertiary education. The mean of preventive measures used by pregnant women was 27.16±0.25. Slightly half (52.4%) always net windows and doors, 38.4% always and 53.4% often cleared bushes around house respectively. About 30.3% of pregnant women often used IPT-SP and 19.9% used direct observation therapy (DOT). On the categorized prevention patterns, half (54.2%) used conventional and 6.64% non-conventional. There was a significant relationship between the patterns of prevention and ANC facilities (χ2 =20.291), beliefs (χ2 = 16.540) at p< 0.005. The patterns of conventional and non-conventional prevention were used by pregnant women. However, pregnant women should be advised to use the recommended FMOH/WHO standard malaria prevention for safety.