Effectiveness of intergrating community and hospital services regarding antenatal care services by AAC model in Quetta, Pakistan

Abstract

The literature review of Antenatal coverage in Quetta city reveals that 51% of pregnant women had only 1 visit for antenatal care and percentage further drops to 14% for 4 antenatal care visits. Considering the above facts a model was developed to increase adherence of pregnant women to WHO recommended 4 times ANC visits, through integrating community and hospital services, counseling, and service mobilization. One hundred pregnant women in their first trimester were randomly selected from the OPD of two government hospitals. The study design was a quasi-experimental study. One hospital served as the control group where as the other as the intervention. Data was collected at two times pre and post in both the groups. The main outcome was the 4 ANC visits completed by pregnant women, and also increase in knowledge, change in attitude and higher satisfaction concerning ANC. At the pretest there was no significant difference in groups regarding, knowledge attitude and satisfaction making the group comparable to conduct the intervention. The posttest results illustrate that there was a significant difference regarding number of ANC visit completed. In the intervention group 33 (71.7%) completed their 4 ANC visits compared to 11 (23.9%) in the control group the difference is statically significant (p < .001). There was also difference in knowledge (p < .001), attitude (p < .001), and satisfaction (p < .001) regarding ANC before and after the intervention. The findings of this research suggests that by increasing pregnant women’s knowledge, changing their attitudes and increasing satisfaction with health service by using health community workers to encourage women for attending ANC, can help adhere pregnant women to 4 times ANC visits according to the WHO guidelines leading to better health for mothers and the unborn child.