Knowledge of Pregnancy and Its Danger Signs Not Improved by Maternal and Child Health Handbook

BACKGROUND: High numbers of maternal mortality rate and child mortality rate continue to be the pressing issues in Indonesia. To tackle this problem, multiple approaches have been undertaken, particularly through distributing a Maternal and Child Health (MCH) handbook to every pregnant woman. However, despite the widespread usage of such handbook, its true efficacy in supporting safe motherhood by improving maternal knowledge on various stages of pregnancy and the associated obstetric danger signs is relatively unknown and remains to be established. METHODS: This is a primary cross-sectional study conducted at Majalengka General District Hospital on recently delivering postpartum women between August and September 2017. A total of 127 women were recruited and later divided into two separate groups according to their self-admission on the degree they had read the MCH handbook (≥ 50% and < 50%) and administered a pre-validated questionnaire to assess their knowledge around pregnancy and its danger signs. RESULTS: We discovered that our population had high knowledge around pregnancy and its danger signs, and the MCH handbook did not hold a significant role in effecting this finding (p value 0.295). Furthermore, various sociodemographic factors (age, educational backgrounds, welfare status, distance from healthcare center, parity and number of ANC visits) also did not exert a statistically significant influence on the level of knowledge in our population (p values 0.579, 0.521, 0.617, 0.908, 0.342, 0.618 and 0.939 respectively). CONCLUSION: To conclude, the MCH handbook did not exert a significant influence in improving maternal knowledge levels around pregnancy and the associated obstetric danger signs.