Abstract:Background: One effort to reduce maternal mortality is through implementing antenatal care (ANC) visits during pregnancy. Routine ANC visits are crucial for monitoring the health of pregnant women and their fetuses. However, data from the past five years show that the number of ANC visits has not met targets in several regions of Indonesia, including Padang City, West Sumatera Province. This study aims to assess the status of ANC visits of pregnant women and associated factors. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 142 third-semester pregnant women at Padang City, West Sumatera Province, Indonesia. A validated questionnaire was used to obtain information about the respondents’ characteristics, ANC visits, and associated factors. Data was analyzed using a chi-square test and multivariate logistic regression. Results: The majority of pregnant women have completed all ANC visits (63.4%), but knowledge remains lacking (66.2%), and attitudes toward prenatal visits are largely negative (54.2%). The logistic regression results show that only the variables of the respondent’s knowledge significantly affect the completeness of ANC visits (P=0.005; OR=3.253; 95%CI=1.433-7.386). However, attitudes, age, parity, education level, working status, economic status, access to health care service, family support, and health worker support were not significantly associated (P=0.06; 0.39; 0.69; 0.59; 0.7; 1; 0.1; 1; 0.36, respectively). Conclusion: Efforts are needed to increase pregnant women’s knowledge regarding ANC by optimizing the role of health workers and cadres in promoting ANC more extensively, both directly and through social media, and increasing maternal literacy by reading the Mother and Child Health handbook. A government policy is needed to ensure pregnant women complete their ANC visits, not solely for claiming delivery costs.
Keywords: Health Systems and Universal Health Coverage (UHC), ANC visit, attitude, knowledge, family support, public health center
