Assessment of Mothers Level of Knowledge About Neonatal Danger Signs and Its Associated Factors in St Paul’s Hospital Millenium Medical College Addis Ababa Ethiopia

Background: Neonatal danger has become a substantial problem in many developing countries like Ethiopia. More specifically, neonatal rates in Ethiopia are among the highest in the world. In this regard, health-seeking behavior of mothers for neonatal care highly relies on their knowledge about neonatal danger sign, and it has been hardly investigated. Therefore, this study was intended to determine the level of mother’s knowledge about neonatal danger signs and to identify factors associated with good mother’s knowledge. Objective: To assess mother’s level of knowledge about neonatal danger sign and its associated factors in St. Paul Hospital, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Methods: Institution based quantitative cross sectional study design was used to assess the knowledge and associated factors that influence neonatal danger signs knowledge among mothers attending postnatal. A total of 159 postnatal mothers was the calculated sample size and selected by simple random sampling technique. Data was collected by using a structured interview questionnaire through face to face interview by six data collectors. Data quality was assured through pretesting the questionnaire on 5% of postnatal mothers and findings from the pretest was used to amend the questionnaire. The data was entered and analyzed by SPSS version 23.0. Result: A total of 155 mothers were interviewed with the response rate of 97.5%. The mean age of mothers was 28.8 (SD ±5.4). More than one third (39.4%) of mothers were in the age range 25-30 years. The majority of mothers were married, 140 (90.3%); orthodox by religion, 84 (54.2%) and Oromo by ethnic group which was 75 (48.7%). Only 46 (29.7%) of all mothers had good knowledge which were having knowledge of at least four of the ten defined neonatal danger signs. Fever was more commonly known danger sign by 55.6% of the mothers. There were no any significant associations based on multivariate logistic regression. Conclusion and recommendations: Majority of mothers had poor knowledge of the majority of neonatal danger signs. Strengthening postnatal counselling at a health facility or dissemination of information community level about danger sign is highly recommended. DOI: 10.7176/JMPB/67-02 Publication date: August 31 st 2020