Prevalence of Unsafe Abortion and Associated Factors among Women Attending the Maternal and Child Health Units of Public Health Centers in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
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Date
2017-02
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Background; unsafe abortion in Ethiopia has long been recognized as among a leading causeof deaths and injuries to women. However there is limited scientific information available onthe women who seek unsafe abortion, factors which may be a cause for unsafe abortion.
Objectives; The objective was to assess the prevalence of unsafe abortion and associated riskfactors among women attending maternal and child health units in public health centers inAddis Ababa.
Methods; Institution based cross sectional study design was employed among 422 womenattending maternal and child health unit of selected health centres between September toOctober 2016 in Addis Ababa A structured interviewer administered questionnaire was used.The collected data was entered using Epi data 3.0 and analyzed using IBM StatisticalPackage for Social Sciences version 20.0. Descriptive statistics was used to describe thestudy variables. Logistic regression analysis was used to assess the relative effect ofdeterminants. A P<0.05 was considered statistically significant.
Results; About 422 women invited to participate and asked for consent. About 20 excludeddue to incomplete responses and refusal yielding 95.3% response rate. Among who have everbeen pregnant (279), about 114(31%) had abortions in their life, of these, unsafe abortion wasreported by 30 women (26%). Regarding the independent predictors, those who havecompleted primary education and above were about 10 times less likely in comparison withthose women whose educational status was below primary level, in comparison with thosewomen who replied abortion is legal, those who said it is allowed only in some cases wereabout 7 times more likely and those who replied not sure about its legalization were morethan 8 times more likely , compared with those women who have no live child currently;those mothers who have more than 3 children and1- 2 children were about ninety seven andtwelve times more likely to have unsafe abortion.
Conclusion; Unsafe abortion is found to be high in Addis Ababa. Factors which include maternal educational status, knowledge regarding the legalization status of abortion inEthiopia, number of pregnancy and number of live children were found to be determinants ofunsafe abortion. Hence, health education regarding unwanted pregnancy, disseminatiinformation regarding the legal status of abortion as well as educating women isrecommended.
Key words; unsafe abortion, prevalence, risk factors
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Unsafe abortion Preva Risk Factors