Effect of place of birth on knowledge of neonatal danger signs and associated factors among mother's in Meicha district, northwest Ethiopia: A community-based comparative cross-sectional study.

Introduction: Neonatal mortality in Ethiopia remains high accounting for 29 per 1,000 live births. Objective: This study compares the knowledge of neonatal danger signs and associated factors of mothers who gave birth at home and health facilities in Northwest Ethiopia. Methods: A comparative community-based cross-sectional study was conducted. A simple random sampling method was used to select the participants. A binary logistic regression analysis was used to identify correlations. Results: A total of 650 mothers were interviewed. Of these, 50.7% (95%, CI=45.7, 55.9) of the mother is aware of the signs of neonatal danger in the district. Knowledge of neonatal danger sign is higher among those who give birth in health care 60.1% than home births 41.1% mothers. Maternal age (AOR: 3.99, 95% CI: (1.45-11.03)), age new born (AOR: 0.53, 95% CI: (0.36-0.78)), Para (AOR:1.27, 95% CI: (1.37-5.31)), postnatal care attendance (AOR=2.42, 95% CI: (1.47, 3.96)) were significantly associated with overall mother’s knowledge. Whereas, residence (AOR: 3.09, 95% CI: (1.44, 6.64)) and occupational of husband (AOR: 0.23, 95% CI: (0.201, 0.67)) were significantly associated with mothers who give birth in health care. Age of new born (AOR: 0.50, 95% CI: (0.28,0.896)), parity(AOR: 0.29, 95% CI: (0.113,0.74)), antenatal care (AOR: 12.04, 95% CI: (5.9,24.65)) was closely associated with home birth mother. Conclusion: The overall mother's knowledge of neonatal danger signs was low but was high among mothers who delivered at health institutions than those who delivered at home. This implies that we need to strengthen the awareness of neonatal danger signs among home-delivered mothers.