Prevalence of Women's Home Birth Preferences and Its Associated Factors in Ethiopia: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Background: In low-income countries, such as Ethiopia, home birth is the main cause of maternal and neonatal mortality. Several separate studies have been conducted on the prevalence of home birth preference. However, there is no pooled prevalence of home birth preferences. So, this systematic review and meta-analysis is aimed at assessing the overall preference for home birth and related factors among Ethiopian women. Methods and Materials: The review included only published articles. Medline/PubMed, Web Science, Google Scholar, Scopus, and the Cochrane Library are the main databases. The review includes cross-sectional studies in English that meet eligibility requirements. The combined prevalence of women's preference for home birth is calculated by random effect models. In addition, Egger's tests and funnel diagrams were used to investigate publication biases. STATA Version 14 is used to perform all statistical analyses. Results: The review included 14 studies with 6631 participants. In Ethiopia, the prevalence of women's preference for home birth was 41.48% (confidence interval (CI): 49.99; 63, 56; I2:98.7%; p ≤ 0.001). In the analysis of the subgroups, the Oromia region had the highest home birth preference rate at 61.40% (55.54%, 67.16), while southern Ethiopia had the lowest value at 20.52% (5.18, 29.75). The probability of preferring home birth was higher for women without education (OR = 0.22, p ≤ 0.001, I 2 = 69.7%) and for younger women (ODR = 0.47, p ≤ 0.001, I 2 = 84.2%). Conclusion: According to the study, 41% of Ethiopian women prefer home births over institutional births. Age and education of women are statistically important factors in the choice of birthplace. To solve this problem, health professionals and other stakeholders are strongly encouraged to provide women's health education at the community and institutional levels.