Determinants of essential newborn care practices among mothers. A descriptive cross-sectional study in a peri-urban community, Ghana.

BACKGROUND

Promoting essential newborn care practices is one of the effective approaches to improving child health outcomes, especially in low-resource areas. This study aims to assess the determinants of essential newborn care practices among mothers in a peri-urban community in Ghana.

METHODS

This descriptive community-based cross-sectional study design used 280 mothers within the Kukuo community in the Tamale metropolis selected through convenience sampling technique. A pretested questionnaire was used for data collection. Data was entered into EpiData version 3.1 and cleaned before being imported into IBM SPSS Statistics Version 26.0 for analysis. The univariate chi-square test and t-test statistic were used to determine the likelihood of practising essential newborn care among mothers. Statistically significant statistics at p-value ≤ 0.05 were modelled using multivariable regression.

RESULTS

Mothers (77.2%) identified the immediate care given to a newborn as essential newborn care. The study revealed that mothers had good knowledge (50.7%) and good practices (60.7%) of essential newborn care. Mothers between the ages of 25-29 years (AOR 1.18; 95%CI 0.35-4.01), had tertiary education or above (AOR = 5.2; 95%CI 1.36-18.49), and traders (AOR = 1.41; 95%CI 0.45-4.42) were more likely to practice good essential new-born care than their counterpart. Also, having good knowledge of ENBC (AOR = 11.57, 95%CI 5.21-25.70) and knowing danger signs in newborns (AOR = 4.62, 95%CI 2.26-9.45) was significantly associated with essential new-born care practice.

CONCLUSION

The study's outcome revealed that mothers had adequate knowledge of essential newborn care, appropriately identified the danger signs in newborns, and practised good essential newborn care. Interventions to improve newborn care must segregate mothers and target specific client knowledge as significant differences were found based on knowledge, education level, and employment type.