Awareness and desirability of the Nigerian antenatal women about analgesia use during childbirth.

Objective: To assess the level of awareness and desirability of antenatal women about use of analgesia during childbirth. Design: This was a crossectional survey. Settings: The study was conducted at the Antenatal Clinic of the University College Hospital – a public tertiary health institution located in Ibadan, South-west Nigeria. Subjects: Six hundred and fifty consentedwomenwere recruited from1stOctober 2005 till 30th ofMarch 2006. Results:Of the 650 subjects, 249(38.3%)were aware of analgesia use in labour and their sources of information were through media (30.9%), antenatal counselling (22.9%), friends/relations (17.3%), internet (5.6%) and others – literature/lectures/ symposium (22.9%). The only factor that influence awareness on logistic regression model was occupation, as health care workers were 17.9 times more likely than the unemployed (OR 17.87 95%CI 17.38 – 43.28). Three hundred and nine (47.5%) of respondents desired analgesia use during childbirth and thecommonest method preferred was intramuscular injection (45.0%). Only parity significantly influenced the desirability on bivariate analysis (p = 0.001). Conclusion: This study shows that the level of awareness of analgesia use in labour is low among the Nigerian antenatal attendees; but there is a significant proportion of those with previous delivery experience desiring its use in their subsequent childbirth. It is recommended that health awareness creation should be vigorously pursued to enlighten the Nigerian populace of the benefit of analgesia while making efforts at introducing the more effective methods in our health care institutions.Niger Med J. Vol. 47, No. 4, Oct. – Dec., 2007: 85 – 88.Keywords:Analgesia, antenatal/pregnant women, childbirth/labour,Nigeria