Analysis of factors influencing antenatal care visits among pregnant women: a case study of Kinondoni municipal council in Tanzania

In Tanzania, maternal mortality rate has been increased from 454 to 556 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in 2010 and 2015-2016 respectively. Over the past decade, about five to six women died of pregnancy-related causes for every 1,000 live births (TDHS 2010 and TDHS-MIS 2015-2016). Only 24% of women in Tanzania had their first ANC visit early and most of them start their first ANC visit late (TDHS-MIS 2015-2016). Therefore, this study was intended to analyze factors influencing antenatal care visits among pregnant women. This was a cross sectional study and used a semi-structured questionnaire to collect data through face to face interview, conducted in Kinondoni Municipal Council in March, 2016. Currently the district has been split up into Kinondoni and Ubungo districts. A total of 424 pregnant women who had started antenatal care visits were selected by using a three stage sampling technique. The collected data were processed and analyzed by IBM SPSS statistics version 20 and Stata 11. Frequency tables, chi-square tests and logistic regression model were used for analysis. The results showed that the majority of pregnant women (69.50%) started their first antenatal care visit late. Testing for HIV/AIDS would prevent ANC attendance, household size and use of family planning methods were statistically significantly associated with late antenatal care visit among pregnant women. It is recommended that the Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elders and Children should put more effort in providing education to communities on ANC services, use of family planning methods and importance of testing for HIV/AIDS.