Time to early initiation of postnatal care service utilization and its predictors among women who gave births in the last 2 years in Ethiopia: a shared frailty model

BACKGROUND: Most maternal and infant deaths occurred within the first month after birth. Nearly half of the maternal deaths and more than a million newborn deaths occurred within the first day of life but these were preventable through early initiation of postnatal care (PNC) services. However, the available evidence on the level of early initiation of PNC service utilization was not adequate to inform policy decisions. Therefore, this study aimed to assess time to early initiation of postnatal care and its predictors using the 2016 Ethiopian Demography and Health Survey (EDHS) datasets. METHODS: Two-stage stratified cluster sampling technique by separating each region into urban and rural areas. A total weighted sample of 6364 women of the 2016 EDHS datasets who gave birth within 2 years preceding the survey was used. Time to early initiation of the PNC visit was estimated using the Kaplan-Meier (K-M) method. Shared frailty model with baseline distributions (Weibull, Gompertz, exponential, log-logistic, and lognormal) and frailty distributions (gamma and inverse Gaussian) were used by taking enumeration areas/clusters as a random effect for predictors of time to early initiation of PNC visit. The adjusted hazard ratio (AHR) with a 95% confidence interval (CI) and p-value less than 0.05 were used to declare the significant predictor variables for time to early initiation of the PNC service utilization. RESULTS: The prevalence of women who utilized PNC services within 42 days was 13.27% (95% CI, 12.46, 14.13). Among these women, only 1.73% of them had got within the first 24 h of birth; 4.66% of them received within 48–72 h and 1.74% of them also had got within 7–14 days. Variables, such as parity (AHR = 1.61, 95% CI: 1.21, 2.15), media exposure (AHR = 1.42, 95% CI: 1.21, 1.68), place of delivery (AHR = 14.36, 95% CI: 11.76, 17.53), caesarean delivery (AHR = 2.17, 95% CI: 1.60, 2.95) and antenatal care visit (AHR = 2.07, 95% CI: 1.63, 2.63) had the higher hazard for PNC services utilization. On the other hand, women who faced with healthcare access problems (AHR = 0.74, 95% CI: 0.60, 0.87) had a lower hazard of PNC service utilization. CONCLUSION: The overall postnatal care service utilization among women in the survey was low, particularly within the first 24 h of delivery. Policy-makers and implementers should promote the utilization of antenatal care and institutional delivery using mass media to increase the continuum of maternity care. The government should also design a new approach to enhance the uptake of postnatal care services for poor households and to scale up the PNC services, including the different possibilities for women who give births at the health facilities and homes. Future researchers had better assess the capacity and accessibility of the local health systems, the level of decentralized decision making, common cultural practices, knowledge, attitude, and perception of mothers towards PNC service utilization. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13690-021-00575-7.