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ABSTRACT
This study was undertaken to investigate the factors related to home delivery after exposure to Primary Health Care (PHC) antenatal services. It also determined the level of awareness of women of child bearing age about the dangers associated with home delivery; the challenges encountered by the women of child bearing age during home delivery. In view of this, nine research questions were raised and six were hypothesized.
A descriptive survey design was used to carry out this study. The population of this study was 2490 women of child bearing age who attended the various Primary Health Care centres for antenatal care but delivered at home. The sample size was 300 women who attended the various PHC centres in Ovia South West Local Government Area for antenatal care, but delivered at home. The instrument for collection of data was a self structured questionnaire. Face and content validity were done for the research instrument. The instrument was validated by three experts who are the head of department at the primary health care level in the local government area, the project supervisor and a Committee of experts from the originating department. Data was analyzed using statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS) of Chi-square and t-test approach with other forms of descriptive statistics.
The following findings were observed: the unfriendly nature of the healthcare workers, the high cost of delivery at the Primary Health Care centres and the poor attention given by healthcare workers are the common factors respondents gave as reasons for delivery at home after attending antenatal care. Most of the respondents stated that neonatal death is the complication they have experienced following home delivery; and majority of the respondents (62.3%) stated that they are aware of neonatal death amongst other findings. Based on the findings, the researcher recommended that more community health workers should be employed and those already working should be retrained, highly resourced, monitored and supervised to ensure they perform their duties effectively as community health workers activities can be very useful for the people to received health education. It was also recommended that government should ensure that antenatal services is made free to women at the local level so that higher response to the Primary Health Care principles is ensured. Government should use the mass media to give health messages to the people to encourage them to utilize primary health care services.
