Factors associated with male involvement in antenatal care in Lusaka urban district, Zambia

Male involvement in antenatal care services refers to various ways in which men are involved in women’s health during pregnancy from a very early stage, which includes provision of finances, nutrition, physical and emotional support. Having men at the centre of women’s health is an essential element that World Health Organisation has been advocating for. The initiative to involve men in maternal health was born during the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Egypt, in the year 1994. The aim of this study was to explore factors that are associated with male involvement in antenatal care. A quantitative paradigm using cross sectional design was carried out. A simple random sample of 383 men with antenatal women at the time of the study and those who had a pregnant partner before, at five (5) systematically selected Lusaka urban health centres between July and August, 2018 were selected. Pretested structured interview schedule was used to capture information from men on male involvement in ANC on service related and social cultural factors. The findings of the study presented revealed that economic status, knowledge levels, attitude of respondents and the health care system were associated with male involvement in ANC, a statistically significant finding (p<0.001). A higher proportion of respondents with high knowledge (60.4%) were involved in ANC as compared to respondents with low knowledge whose involvement stood at 10%. In respondents with good attitude towards involvement in ANC, the rate of involvement (41%) was higher than in respondents with bad attitude where it stood at 21.8%.In terms of the health care system, good health care was associated with higher rate of male involvement in ANC (42.3%) as compared to bad health care were involvement was at 18.2%. Similarly, respondents with a high economic status were involved in ANC (38.4%) as compared to those with a low economic status whose involvement rate was at 12.4%. A binary logistic regression test was done to check the combined effects of Knowledge, Attitude, Health Care Systems and Economic Status on the involvement of males in ANC. It was observed that changes in Knowledge from low to high, Attitude from bad to good, Health Care Systems from poor to good, and Economic Status from low to high would all impact significantly on the outcome of the model. The results from this study suggest that male involvement in positively impacted with improvements in knowledge levels of men. Therefore there is need to increase public awareness on male involvement in ANC to ensure positive maternal and neonatal outcome.
Key words: Male involvement, Antenatal Care, Pregnancy, Lusaka urban district, Health care system, Economic status