Harmful cultural practices during perinatal period and associated factors among women of childbearing age in Southern Ethiopia: Community based cross-sectional study

INTRODUCTION: Although the maternal mortality ratio has decreased by 38% in the last decade, 810 women die from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth every day, and two-thirds of maternal deaths occur in Sub-Saharan Africa alone. The lives of women and newborns before, during, and after childbirth can be saved by skilled care. The main factors that prevent women from receiving care during pregnancy and childbirth are harmful cultural practices. The aim of this study was to assess the level of harmful cultural practices during pregnancy, childbirth, and postnatal period, and associated factors among women of childbearing age in Southern Ethiopia. METHODS: A community-based cross-sectional study design was conducted in the Gurage zone, among representative sample of 422 women of reproductive age who had at least one history of childbirth. A simple random sampling technique was used to recruit participants. Data were collected by six experienced and trained data collectors using a pretested structured questionnaire with face to face interviews. Harmful cultural practices are assessed using 11 questions and those who participate in any one of them are considered as harmful cultural practices. Descriptive statistics were performed and the findings were presented in text and tables. Binary logistic regression was used to assess the association between each independent variable and outcome variable. RESULTS: Harmful cultural practices were found to be 71.4% [95%CI, 66.6–76.0]. The mean age of study participants was 27.6 (SD ± 5.4 years). Women with no formal education [AOR 3.79; 95%CI, 1.97–7.28], being a rural resident [AOR 4.41, 95%CI, 2.63–7.39], having had no antenatal care in the last pregnancy [AOR 2.62, 95%CI, 1.54–4.48], and pregnancy being attended by untrained attendants [AOR 2.67, 95%CI, 1.58–4.51] were significantly associated with harmful cultural practice during the perinatal period. CONCLUSION: In this study we found that low maternal education, rural residence, lack of antenatal care and lack of trained birth attendant were independent risk factors associated with women employing harmful cultural practices during the perinatal period. Thus, strong multi-sectoral collaboration targeted at improving women’s educational status and primary health care workers should take up the active role of women’s health education on the importance of ANC visits to tackle harmful cultural practices.