Adolescent's Utilisation of Antenatal Services in Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe

Abstract

The study sought to evaluate the factors which influence the utilization of antenatal services by adolescent mothers in Chitungwiza. Utilization of antenatal services was measured using the number of visits made to the antenatal clinic. The data was collected using a structured questionnaire from a valid sample of 160 participants who visited any of the four antenatal municipality clinics in Chitungwiza. After checking for multicollinearity and outliers, multiple linear regression analysis was employed to evaluate the effect of household income, distance to the nearest clinic, waiting period on first visit, age, family support, marital status, pregnancy intention and the level of completed education on utilization of antenatal care services. The unstandardized regression coefficients (β1 to β8) show the effect of each predictor variable on utilization of antenatal care. The study established that age (β1=0.550, p=0.000), marital status (β2=0.519, p=0.000), pregnancy intention (β3=0.404, p=0.000), family support (β4=-0.381, p=0.000), distance to the nearest clinic (β5=-0.358, p=0.000), household income (β6=0.320, p=0.000), and waiting period on first visit (β7=0.082, p=0.000), and had significant influence on utilization of antenatal care services. The level of completed education had a non-significant influence utilization on antenatal services by adolescent mothers in Chitungwiza (β8=0.190, p=0.054). The study recommended that families and local clinics should create enabling environments which makes it easier for adolescent mothers to frequent the antenatal clinics. The influence of socio-economic factors cannot be ignored. At the same time, clinics should improve on service delivery in the form of enough drugs and personnel to avoid unnecessary delays when one visits the clinic.