Abstract:
Introduction: Essential newborn care is a care that every newborn baby needs regardless of
where it is born or its size. It should be applied immediately after birth and continued at least
for the first seven days. Different studies were conducted on the given topic but they failed in
assessing health workers that gave essential newborn care, health care system, different
traditional beliefs and some of the studies were methodological problems. So, the main aim of
this study was to fill those gaps in Chencha District, Southern Ethiopia.
Method and Materials: Mixed type community based cross sectional study was conducted
among 630 mothers from February 8- 28, 2017 by using one-stage cluster sampling and
purposive sampling method for quantitative and qualitative study respectively. Structured
interviewer administered pre-tested questionnaire for quantitative data and a guide for
discussion was used to collect qualitative information. The collected data were entered into
Epi data version 3.1 and then exported into SPSS window version 22 analysis. Bivariate and
multivariate analysis was done by using binary logistic regression. All variables with P<0.2 in
the bivariate analysis were included in to final model and statistical significance was declared
at P< 0.05. The goodness of fit was tested by Hosmer-Lemeshow statistic and Omnibus tests.
Multi co-linearity test was carried out by using standard error and collinearity statistics.
Thematic framework analysis with Open Code version 4.02 was used for qualitative data. Results: In this study 38.4% (95%CI: 34.6%, 42.2%) of mothers had good practice on
essential newborn care. Out of the respondents 52.9% had safe cord care, 71.0% had optimal
thermal care and 74.8% had good neonatal feeding. Antenatal care, attending pregnant
mothers meeting, immediate postnatal care, wealth index, faced complication during delivery
and knowledge of mother were statistically significant with odds (AOR=3.13, 95%CI: 1.47,
6.64), (AOR=2.90, 95%CI: 1.45, 5.82), (AOR=3.27, 95%CI: 1.99, 5.35), (AOR=1.74, 95%CI:
1.12, 2.72), (AOR=0.20, 95%CI: 0.11, 0.37) and (AOR=7.36, 95%CI: 2.77, 19.59)
respectively. Conclusions and recommendations: This study indicated that the level of essential newborn
care practice was low. Therefore, strengthening the provision of antenatal care and postnatal
care services and information communication education and behavioral change
communications on essential newborn care is better been given attention.
