Various efforts to reduce maternal mortality have been carried out in various countries. However, the maternal mortality rate still one of the global issues. Even though the number of deaths has begun to decrease, progress is too slow to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) target in 2030. Indonesia, as one of the countries in Southeast Asia, is a significant contributor to death, which is 126.0 and ranks 4th among the contributors to maternal deaths among the ASEAN countries under Laos, Myanmar, and Cambodia. Closest neighboring countries such as Malaysia and Singapore, have much lower maternal mortality rates, namely 23.8 and 7.1.
Indonesia is a country with many ethnic groups. A large number of ethnic groups also makes a lot of developing local knowledge, including local knowledge about pregnancy and childbirth. In Gayo tribe, women feel they have to keep their pregnancy a secret for fear of being eaten by evil spirits. Muyu women in Boven Digoel must be exiled because the bad air of childbirth can make all family members in the hospital. The Ngalum women in the Bintang Mountains must get out of the house and live in an isolated place because the community considers the blood of childbirth will bring bad energy. The local belief about pregnancy and childbirth is often found to be contrary to modern medical knowledge, and often endangers the condition of the mother.
Based on 2017 Indonesian Demographic and Health Survey, this article is intended to analyze education as a predictor of knowledge about pregnancy danger signs in rural areas of Indonesia. The unit of analysis used was women of childbearing age (WUS) aged 15-49 years in rural areas of Indonesia so that a sample of 44,647 respondents was obtained. In the end, binary logistic regression is used to determine the predictor.
The results of the analysis inform that WUS with primary education has 1,973 times more likely to know the danger signs of pregnancy than uneducated WUS. WUS with secondary education are 3,355 times more likely to know the danger signs of pregnancy than women without education. Women with higher education were 7,169 times to know the danger signs of an uneducated WUS pregnancy. The higher education, the more know the danger signs of pregnancy.
Besides education, four other characteristics of WUS were also found to be predictors of knowledge about the danger signs of pregnancy in rural areas of Indonesia. The four characteristics are age, work status, socioeconomic status, and parity, also found to be predictors of knowledge about pregnancy danger signs. WUS who have a job are 0.958 times more likely to know the danger signs of pregnancy than non-working WUS. At the same time, all socioeconomic status has better knowledge about pregnancy danger signs than the poorest WUS. On the other hand, it was found that WUS, who have many children (multipara and grand multipara) have a lower likelihood of knowing the danger signs of pregnancy than primiparous women (having one child or less).
Based on the results of the analysis, it can be concluded that education is a predictor of knowledge about pregnancy danger signs in rural areas of Indonesia. Besides, there are four other variables, which are also predictors, namely age, occupation, wealth, and parity.
Author: Ratna Dwi Wulandari Link: https://www.ijicc.net/images/vol_13/13163_Wulandari_2020_E_R.pdf
