Determinant of Potential Barriers of Maternal Health Care Utilization in Rural Area in Lemo: South Region of Ethiopia

Background: Maternal health refers to the health of women during pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period. Maternal utilization is the property of attending a health centre during the ANC period. Complications of pregnancy and childbirth are a leading cause of maternal morbidities and mortalities in developing countries due to non-attending of maternal health care service utilization in the health centre. Objective: This paper aims to analysis potential barriers for maternal health care utilization in a rural area and to identify associated factors among mothers in the rural districts. Methods: A Primary data were collected from 309 women’s those gave birth from June 2017 to June 2019 in 35 lemo districts south region of Ethiopia. A stratified simple random sampling technique was used to select the respondents s from a total of 1415 birth gave women’s. The data was collected with a designed questionnaire and using interviewing the mother who gave birth in the study. Maternal health care service utilization was considered as a response variable in this study and it can be categorized as (0=utilized and 1=not utilized). A logistic regression model with a Bayesian approach was used to handle the data using both SPSS version 20 and Open BUGS version 3.2.3 software. Results: This study revealed that the probability of not use maternal health care services in the study area was 41.5%. Age women, Maternal education, Husband education, Occupation of women, Occupation of Husband, counselling, transportation access, distance from the health centre, number of children in a family, and religion are major potential barriers influencing maternal health care service utilization in the study areas.