Abstract:
Background: Despite the effort to promote male involvement in maternal and child health,
studies in low- and middle-income countries have reported that male participation is still low.
Awareness, perception and social economic factors are reported to impact the involvement of
expectant fathers in ANC and maternal health in general. The aim of this study was to
determine the influence of awareness, perception and social-economic factors on expectant
fathers‟ participation in ANC health education sessions in Muleba District.
Methods: This study was a cross-sectional study conducted in Muleba district found in
Kagera region. This study included expectant fathers residing Muleba district. Data was
collected by using questionnaires and later managed and analyzed by using SPSS program
version 23.Descriptive statistics were used to describe the data and presented as frequencies
and proportion. Additionally, measures of central tendency were used to summarize
continuous variables. Lastly, univariate and multivariate logistic regression models were built
to assess factors that are associated with expectant fathers‟ participation in ANC health
education session where results are presented as unadjusted and adjusted odds ratio
respectively.
Results: A total of 562 of participants were enrolled in the study with a proportion of 31.1%.
Their mean age was 36 years ± 1.93 years standard deviation. Majority of study
participants510 (90.75%) were in the age group of ≤45years.Among all expectant fathers
enrolled in the study, 522 (92.9%) were aware of and participated in ANC services. In terms
of categories of perception on ANC,we found, 333 (59.25%) claimed there is long waiting
time on ANC clinics and 545 (96.98%) reported they understand that they are supposed to
accompany their wives to the ANC clinics. We assessed for their economic status and found
that, over a third of expectant fathers 216 (38.4%) had monthly income of ≤150‟000 Tshs.
Lastly, we found that increasing age was associated with awareness of ANC among males
where for each increase in one year, the odds of awareness to ANC education among males
increased by 7%, 95% confidence interval 1.02-1.12, p value 0.007.
Conclusion: We found that there is a good number of expectant fathers‟ involvement in ANC
services in Muleba District, which is largely due to role played by community health care
workers at Muleba District. There is an increase in awareness, perception on expectant
fathers‟ involvement, however, low socio-economic factors contributed largely to set back of
expectant fathers‟ involvement on ANC health services. Lastly, increasing age was associated
with increased awareness of expectant fathers on ANC health services at Muleba District.
