Determinants of essential newborn care practices among mothers. A descriptive cross-sectional study in a peri-urban community, Ghana

Promoting essential newborn care practices is one of the effective approaches to improving child health outcomes, especially in low-resource areas. This study aims to assess the determinants of essential newborn care practices among mothers in a peri-urban community in Ghana. This descriptive community-based cross-sectional study design used 280 mothers within the Kukuo community in the Tamale metropolis selected through convenience sampling technique. A pretested questionnaire was used for data collection. Data was entered into EpiData version 3.1 and cleaned before being imported into IBM SPSS Statistics Version 26.0 for analysis. The univariate chi-square test and t-test statistic were used to determine the likelihood of practising essential newborn care among mothers. Statistically significant statistics at p-value ≤ 0.05 were modelled using multivariable regression. Mothers (77.2%) identified the immediate care given to a newborn as essential newborn care. The study revealed that mothers had good knowledge (50.7%) and good practices (60.7%) of essential newborn care. Mothers between the ages of 25–29 years (AOR 1.18; 95%CI 0.35–4.01), had tertiary education or above (AOR = 5.2; 95%CI 1.36–18.49), and traders (AOR = 1.41; 95%CI 0.45–4.42) were more likely to practice good essential new-born care than their counterpart. Also, having good knowledge of ENBC (AOR = 11.57, 95%CI 5.21–25.70) and knowing danger signs in newborns (AOR = 4.62, 95%CI 2.26–9.45) was significantly associated with essential new-born care practice. The study's outcome revealed that mothers had adequate knowledge of essential newborn care, appropriately identified the danger signs in newborns, and practised good essential newborn care. Interventions to improve newborn care must segregate mothers and target specific client knowledge as significant differences were found based on knowledge, education level, and employment type. The type and nature of care usually given to newborn babies are critical for their survival. This care supports their ability to regulate body temperature, decrease their risk of infection, promote the initiation of breastfeeding and increase the bonding between mothers and babies. This study assessed the factors that influence the type of care for newborn babies. We conducted a survey using 280 mothers in the Tamale metropolis. The mothers responded to a pretested questionnaire. Our study demonstrated that mothers had good knowledge about the type of care usually rendered during the first days of life. The factors that influenced the care rendered to newborn babies were the mothers’ age, level of education, occupation, having good knowledge of childcare and knowing the danger signs of infants. It is therefore important that during health education in the ante-natal and post-natal clinics, mothers are segregated based on these characteristics for the health information to be tailored to address their specific needs.