Antenatal And Postnatal Care Service Utilization In Health Facilities In Rivers State, Nigeria.

Introduction: Antenatal healthcare (ANC) is defined as the care a pregnant mother receives before birth, while postnatal care (PNC) is the care given to the mother and her newborn baby immediately after the birth of the placenta and for the first six weeks of life. This Study sort to determine antenatal care and postnatal service utilization in hospitals in Rivers State.

Methods: A 5-year review of data from 347 health facilities was collected in Rivers State from 1st January 2018 – 31st December 2022. The data was analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 21 and presented as frequencies, and percentages in tables and charts.

Results: The total ANC attendance was 913,332 visits with the first and fourth visits making up 426,166 (46.7%) of all ANC visits. The highest number of first and fourth ANC visits were recorded in 2019, while the lowest number of first and fourth ANC visits were recorded in 2020 and 2021, respectively. Antenatal attendance increased from 44.4% in 2018 to 52.4% in 2019, then declined to 40.7% in 2020, 38.9% in 2021, and then improved to 44.4% in 2022. The percentage of pregnant women who received haematinics (iron and folic acid supplements) during their ANC visit was high, ranging from 79.7% in 2020 to the peak of 96.7% in 2022. Of the PNC visits 51.8 % of the women attended PNC visits in 2018 with a decline to 38.7% and 36.8% in 2019 and 2020 respectively and progressively increased to 44.2% and 44% in 2021 and 2022.

Conclusion: In the study, antenatal and postnatal visits were generally low. These visits reduced from 2019 to 2021 could be the low patronage during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study revealed that there is low utilization of ANC services in the study area.