Does unwanted pregnancy lead to adverse health and healthcare utilization for mother and child? Evidence from low- and middle-income countries

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Hajizadeh, M
Nghiem, S
Griffith University Author(s)
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2020
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Abstract

Objectives: Unwanted pregnancy is an important public health concern in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Using a pooled dataset from 48 Demographic Health Surveys conducted in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe (n = 494,778), we examined the effect of unwanted pregnancy on maternal and child healthcare utilization and child health outcomes in LMICs. Methods: We used logistic regression models to estimate the effect of unwanted pregnancy on antenatal care use, supervised delivery, childhood vaccination and three indicators of child health, viz. stunting (height-for-age), underweight (weight-for-age) and wasting (weight-for-height). Results: We found that mothers of children whose pregnancies had been unwanted had a lower probability of attending four or more antenatal care visits by 3.6% (95% confidence interval = 1.9–5.4%) compared to those whose pregnancy was wanted. We did not find significant impacts of unwanted pregnancy on supervised delivery, childhood vaccination uptake or child health indicators. Conclusions: Birth characteristics, household-level determinants and country-level characteristics seem to be more closely related to maternal and child healthcare utilization as well as child health outcomes than whether the pregnancy was wanted or unwanted in LMICs.

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International Journal of Public Health

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65

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4

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© The Author(s) 2020. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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Health services and systems

Public health

Child health

Low- and middle-income countries

Maternal and child healthcare

Unwanted pregnancy

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Hajizadeh, M; Nghiem, S, Does unwanted pregnancy lead to adverse health and healthcare utilization for mother and child? Evidence from low- and middle-income countries, International Journal of Public Health, 2020, 65 (4), pp. 457-468

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