Factors Associated With Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes Among Women Living In Akumadan Community In The Ashanti Region Of Ghana

ABSTRACT

Background: Adverse pregnancy outcomes have devastating effects on the survival of both the mother and the infant. There is widespread adverse pregnancy outcomes in developing countries. About 5.4 million children die before their 5th birthday and 46% are neonatal deaths. Another 830 women die every day from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. Several factors can lead to adverse pregnancy outcomes. These include socio-cultural factors, health facility related factors and medical factors. What has not been fully described is how these factors apply in the Ghanaian context especially in rural communities like Akumadan in the Offinso North District.

Objective: To identify the factors associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes among women in their reproductive age living in the Akumadan community of the Offinso North District.

Methodology: Using a descriptive cross-sectional design, structured questionnaires were administered to collect quantitative data on socio-cultural factors, health facility-related factors and medical factors associated with the adverse pregnancy outcomes among 300 women in their reproductive ages living in the Akumadan community. The data was analyzed using Stata version 15 (StataCorp, Texas, USA). Bivariate logistic regression models were fitted and chi-square statistics used to determine associations between the adverse pregnancy outcomes and the explanatory variables. Odds ratios and p-values were reported to establish the magnitude and strength of association of outcomes and the explanatory variables at the significance level (alpha) of 0.05 and confident level of 95%.

Results: The prevalence of adverse pregnancy outcome was (27.7%). The most prevailing adverse outcome of pregnancy among the women in Akumadan was stillbirth (8.0%) followed by miscarriage (7.7%), preterm (3.3%) and birth defects (2.7%). Marital status,

gravidity, occupation, drying food by the roadside and eating food dried by the roadside were found to have an association with the adverse pregnancy outcomes.

Conclusion: There was high prevalence of adverse pregnancy outcomes among residents in the predominantly farming communities at Akumadan and these were associated with important practices in their daily livelihoods like drying food by the roadside and eating food dried by the roadside. Marital status, gravidity and occupation. Further research should be conducted to establish the causal relationship between these factors and the adverse pregnancy outcomes.