The Importance of Prenatal Diagnosis for the Early Detection of Fetal Abnormalities in Rural Area

Background: Prenatal diagnosis in rural area is a global challenges. The detection rate of congenital abnormalities is still increasing in rural areas due to delays of early detection during pregnancy. Therefore, community service was conducted through webinars to provide insight into the importance of prenatal diagnosis for pregnant women in rural area. Methods: This is a pre-experimental study with 200 webinar participants of community service. Participants who were willing to fill out the questionnaire in google form were 100 people. The participants consisted of patients and non-patients of the PKU Muhammadiyah Gamping Hospital Yogyakarta, Indonesia. They come from rural areas in the Regency of Kulon Progo and Sleman. The Pearson correlation analysis was used to correlate the 3 indicators with knowledge of the importance of prenatal diagnosis of the fetus in the womb. Results: The importance of knowledge in early detection for fetal abnormalities and children's growth development, have a significance value of 0.000 each (p-value  0.05). Conclusion: Prenatal diagnosis in rural area is considered as an effort to increase early detection of fetal abnormalities and child development. The building of awareness of prenatal diagnosis begins with a positive expectations of the services at the hospital.