Abstract:
Introduction: About 210 million women become pregnant a year, with one out of every ten pregnancies terminating unsafely worldwide. In developing countries, unsafe induced abortion is a leading cause of maternal mortality and morbidity. In addition, the burden of public health is also greatest in developing region. In Ethiopia, abortion and its complications are responsible for 30% of maternal deaths. Despite the problem's significance, little is known about the factors that lead to women terminating their pregnancies. So, this study aims to identify the determinants of induced abortion among women who received maternal health care services in public hospitals of Arba Minch and Wolayita Sodo town, Southern Ethiopia, 2021.
Methods: An institutional-based unmatched case-control study was conducted among 413 (103 cases and 310 controls) women from 15th April to 15th June 2021 in selected public hospitals of Arba Minch and Wolayita Sodo town, Southern Ethiopia. The data were collected using a pretested and structured questionnaires through face-to-face interview via Kobo Collect v3.1 mobile tools and analyzed by STATA version14. Bivariate and multivariable logistic regression analysis was computed to identify the association between each independent variable and the outcome variable and finally P-value less than 0.05 with 95% CI was used to declare statistically significant determinants of induced abortion among women.
Results: In this study, 103 cases and 309 controls were participated. Urban residence (AOR=2.33; CI: 95% 1.26-4.32), encounter first sex at age of 20-24 years (AOR=0.51;95% CI:0.27-0.97), multiple sexual partner (AOR=5.47; 95% CI: 2.98-10.03), women who had one child (AOR=0.32; 95% CI: 0.10-0.99),and good knowledge on contraceptives(AOR=0.12; 95% CI: 0.03-0.46) were identified as determinants of induced abortion.
Conclusions and recommendations: Interventions focusing on those identified factors could probably reduce the burden and consequences of induced abortion. Sexual and reproductive health education and family planning programs should target community-based outreach programs regularly to raise community awareness of contraception by involving adolescents and the prevention of unintended pregnancy to reduce induced abortion.
