Does quality of antenatal care influence antepartum stillbirth in Hossana City, South Ethiopia?

BACKGROUND: Antepartum stillbirth is a public health problem in a low-income country like Ethiopia. Quality antenatal care (ANC) is supposed to reduce the risk of many bad outcomes. Thus the main objective of this study was to identify the effect of quality antenatal care on antepartum stillbirth in Public health facilities of Hossana town Hadiya zone south Ethiopia. METHOD: About 1123 mothers with a gestational age of less than 16 weeks were identified and followed using an observational longitudinal study to determine whether the quality of ANC influences antepartum stillbirth or not. Standardized and pretested observation checklists and participants’ interview questionnaires were employed to obtain the necessary information after getting both written and verbal consent from the concerned bodies and study participants. In this study, quality was measured by the process attributes of quality to measure the acceptable standard of quality of antenatal care. Women who received ≥75% of essential ANC services (from 1(st)-4(th) visit) were categorized under received good quality antenatal care. General estimating equation analysis was done to determine the effect of quality antenatal care on antepartum stillbirth. RESULT: A total of 121 (12.3%) 95% CI (10.3%, 14.5%) mothers who were observed during delivery had encountered antepartum stillbirth. In this study, the overall quality of antenatal care service that was provided in the whole visit (1(st) -4(th)) was 1230 (31.38%). Higher quality ANC decreases the odds of antepartum stillbirth by almost 81%, after controlling other factors (0.19 (AOR 0.19 at 95% CI; 0.088 to 0.435). There is a change in the odds of developing antepartum stillbirth as the level of education of mothers increases. Moreover, mothers with a history of preexisting hypertension were more like to have antepartum stillbirth AOR = 3.1, 95%CI (1.44, 6.77)]. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION: Therefore, having a good quality of ANC significantly reduces antepartum stillbirth. Strategies need to be developed on the problems identified to improve the quality of ANC and reduce antepartum stillbirth significantly.