Factors Affecting Expectant Fathers’ From Participation in Antenatal Care Health Education Sessions in Muleba District, Tanzania

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.