Attitude Towards Delivery through Caesarean Section among Reproductive Age Women in Imo State

Abstract

Most pregnant women do accept caesarean section at the point of death leading to maternal mortality highest rate and neonatal mortality. This study investigated attitude towards delivery through caesarean section among reproductive age women in Imo State. The study was guided by one research questions and two hypotheses.  Cross-sectional survey design was adopted. The population of the study was 1,056,308 reproductive age women in Imo State. The sample size for this study was 504 reproductive age women which was selected using multi-stage sampling procedure. Structured questionnaire entitled: Attitude towards Caesarean Section Questionnaire (ACSQ) was used as instrument for data collection. Cronbach alpha computation was used to determine the reliability of the instrument and the instrument had reliability coefficient (r=0.70). The data collected were analyzed using mean and standard deviation for the research questions while t-test and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were used to test the hypotheses. The study found that reproductive age women had negative attitude towards delivery through caesarean section in Imo State (2.80±0.52). Both 15-34years (2.87±0.53) and 35years and above (2.72±0.51), those with Non formal education (2.82±0.48), Primary education (2.76±0.53), Secondary education (2.92±0.50), Tertiary education (2.93±0.54) had negative attitude towards delivery through caesarean section in Imo State. Furthermore, there were significance differences in the attitudes towards delivery through caesarean sections among reproductive age women by age and level of education (p>0.05). The study concluded that reproductive age women in Imo State had negative attitude attitudes towards delivery through caesarean section. Therefore, the researcher recommended among others that Health care workers and health educators should provide health education and proper counseling to reproductive age women using campaigns and sensitization during antenatal period on the need to accept caesarean section if the situation arise.