Abstract
Introduction: Maternal and child death due to postpartum haemorrhage can be caused by poor delivery management by unskilled birth attendants.
Objective: The study explored the perception of pregnant women and the utilization of Traditional Birth Attendant (TBA) services in Oshimili-North Local Government Area of Delta State.
Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional survey was conducted. The multistage sampling technique was used. Four out of 9 communities that made up the LGA were selected. Three villages were picked randomly from the selected communities. In each village, 2 TBA homes were taken from which 16 pregnant women who met the inclusion criteria were selected. A total of 384 well-structured questionnaires were distributed, and 381 were collected. The data retrieved were evaluated using a Likert scale, and the hypotheses were analyzed with one-way Analysis of Variance using Microsoft Excel, 2022 version, at a 95% confidence level.
Results: The women’s ages attending the TBA homes ranged from 15 to ≥ 40 years, while the mean age was 22.5±6.1 years. 33.3% were within 25-29 years, mostly married Christians (74.5%) with little formal education (57%), mostly farmers (32.3%) who had given birth to at least five children (37.5%), whose residences were far from health facilities (60.9%). The perception, level of satisfaction, and extent of utilization of TBAs' services were acceptable (weighted mean ≥ 2.50) because they provided compassionate services, gave them respect, kept information about them private, were close to their homes, understood their languages, and were always accessible.
Conclusion: There was a significant relationship (p<0.05) between the educational level, age, occupation, location of health facilities, and the perception of utilization of TBAs. Belief, religion, accessibility, availability, cost of delivery, and parity were determinants for high patronage of TBAs.
Recommendation: An intensive health campaign against home delivery should be adopted to change the orientation of pregnant women.