Background; Complications of pregnancy and childbirth are the leading cause of disability and death among women between the ages of 15-49. Attempts to predict these complications before they occur have not been successful. Skilled attendance at all births is considered to be the single most critical intervention for ensuring safe motherhood.
Objective; To assess factors associated with safe delivery service utilization among mothers who gave birth during last five years preceding the survey in Sheka zone.
Methodology; A cross sectional community based survey supplemented by qualitative design was conducted in Sheka Zone from February to March 2008. A multistage sampling technique was used to select the sample of 554 women. Data were collected through structured pre-tested and semi structured questionnaires and checklist. The data were entered in to Epinfo version 3.3 and analyzed on SPSS version 13 computer software. A univirate, bivirate and multivariate analyses were done using frequencies, x2 and binary logistic regressions respectively. The study was conducted after approval of Institutional Review Board of Medical faculty, Addis Ababa University and informed verbal consent was taken from study participants.
Result; The study revealed that women’s educational status, birth order, prenatal care use, previous delivery at health facility and birth complication encounter during labor were independent predictors of maternal utilization of safe delivery service. Mothers who completed at least secondary school were more likely to give birth at health facility than those uneducated (AOR= 3.26, 95% CI= 1.51-7.06). Women with birth order above four were less likely to give birth at a health facility than those with first order births AOR= 0.21, 95%CI= 0.10-0.43. Women who had encountered problems in their immediate birth and received prenatal care were more likely to give birth at health facilities AOR= 33.78
95% CI=16.44.-69.39) and (AOR= 2.55, 95% CI= 1.05 6.21) respectively.
Conclusion; Factors affecting safe delivery service utilization are related to the user (women) and provider (health system) those are interrelated to each other. Consequently women empowerment, promotion of maternal education, prenatal care utilization, information education and communication on obstetric risks and general health service expansion were recommended.