Birth preparedness and its association with place of delivery among women in rural and urban communities of Ogun east senatorial district Nigeria

Background: Birth preparedness promotes the timely use of skilled maternal and neonatal care, reduces delays in receiving care; reduces maternal death, and ensures women have professional delivery thus reducing obstetric complications. Making the right decisions regarding the place of delivery influences the outcome of labour and childbirth. Objectives: To assess the practice of birth preparedness and its association with the place of delivery among women in rural and urban communities of Ogun East Senatorial District. Methods: A comparative cross-sectional study was carried out among 750 women in the rural and urban communities selected using a multistage sampling technique. An interviewer-administered, structured questionnaire adapted from the safe motherhood questionnaire of the Johns Hopkins Program for International Education in Gynecology and Obstetrics (JHPIEGO) and the Nigeria Demographic Health Survey (NDHS) 2018 was used. Data was analyzed using IBM SPSS version 22.0 and the statistical significance was set at p<0.05. Relevant descriptive and inferential statistics were calculated and results were presented in frequency tables. Results: Urban respondents were older (mean age 31.07±6.115 years) than their rural counterparts (mean age 30.69±6.312 years). The difference in the mean ages was not statistically significant (p=0.401). Urban respondents were significantly better prepared during their last pregnancy than rural respondents (p=0.022). The majority of respondents in both rural (n=288, 76.8%) and urban areas (n=296, 78.9%) utilized health facilities as a place of delivery during their last pregnancy; the difference was not statistically significant. Conclusion: Disparities existed in this study between rural and urban areas in the practice of birth preparedness. This calls for more health education interventions to increase the practice of birth preparedness in rural areas, having an ideal birth plan, which targets health facility delivery. Keywords: Birth preparedness; practice; place of delivery; utilization of skilled birth attendance.