Impact of Covid-19 Pandemic on Anc Clinic Visits and Deliveries by Skill Birth Attendant: A Retrospective Analysis in Kaduna State

Abstract

COVID-19 pandemic caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-COV-2) was first discovered in December 2019 in Wuhan, China and later declared a pandemic on March 11, 2020 by the WHO. This study was conducted to assess the impact of COVID -19 pandemic and its attendant infection prevention of lockdown on ANC utilization and deliveries by skilled birth attendants in Kaduna State. It is a retrospective data review of 18 months data on ANC clinic visit and skill birth delivery from 1,722 health facilities. October 2019 to March 2021 data was extracted from the DHIS 2. The analysis was carried out on SPSS using One Way ANOVA. A decline of 13.5% antenatal attendance for first booking compared to pre-COVID-19 was recorded. There was a slight increase of 3.5% Post-COVID-19. There was also a reduction of 4.1% in the number of pregnant women who had the four recommended ANC visits during the COVID-19 compared to pre-COVID-19 period. However, there was a reduction of 10.2% of pregnant women returning post COVID-19 lockdown. The study revealed increased number of pregnant women that delivered during and post COVID-19. There was an increase of 2, 753 and 1,699 during and post-COVID-19, respectively. At 95% confidence interval using significance value is 0.610 (i.e., p = .610), the significance is more than 0.05. Therefore, there is no statistically significant difference in the ANC utilization and skill birth attendance before, during and after the Covid-19 pandemic. Therefore Covid-19 did not affect ANC and skill birth deliveries.