Background: Early initiation of antenatal care (ANC) provided by skilled personnel is essential as it enables pregnant women to receive comprehensive reproductive health services. Early ANC utilisation could prevent complications related to pregnancy and improve maternal and neonatal health outcomes. Regardless of this, only forty-one in every hundred women in Cameroon seek early ANC services. Studies on the uptake of antenatal care in Cameroon have not focused on individual and community-level factors that influence early initiation of ANC. This study aimed at investigating the association between individual and community-level factors and early ANC uptake in Cameroon.
Methods: This study was a cross-sectional survey design. Data was extracted from the women's file of the 2018 Cameroon Demographic and Health Survey (CDHS). A sample of 4,183 women aged 15-49 who had complete information on variables of interest to the study was used. The outcome variable was early ANC (i.e. women whose first ANC occurred between 0-3 months of pregnancy). Eighteen explanatory variables consisting of fifteen individual-level variables and three community-level variables were selected for the study. At 95% confidence interval (95% CI), two-level multilevel models were built. The results for the fixed effects were presented in adjusted odds ratio (aOR) and the random effects were expressed in terms of Intra-Class Correlation (ICC) and Primary Sampling Units (PSUs) variance.
Results: Descriptively, 46% [CI = 45.0-48.0] of the women aged 15-49 attended ANC earlier. The median age at which women started utilising early ANC was 28 (15 to 48) years. For the fixed effects results, it was found that the odds of seeking early ANC increased among those aged 35-39 [aOR = 1.78, CI = 1.24-2.57], the richest [aOR = 2.43, CI = 1.63-3.64] and those with secondary/higher education [aOR = 1.38, CI = 1.05-1.82]. Muslims [aOR = 0.73, CI = 0.60-0.88] and women at parity four or more had lesser odds to seek early ANC [aOR = 0.63, CI = 0.49-0.82]. The study found that primary sampling unit (community/cluster) [σ2 = 0.53, CI = 0.40-0.72] and individual [σ2 = 0.16, CI = 0.09-0.29] level variations exist in early initiation of ANC. About 14% (intra-class correlation (ICC) = 0.14) and 5% (ICC = 0.05) variability in early initiation of ANC were attributable to variations in the primary sampling unit (community/cluster) and individual-level factors, respectively.
Conclusion: Individual-level factors (maternal age, wealth status, educational attainment and religious affiliation) were associated with early initiation of ANC whereas variations in cluster/community characteristics contributed to the variations in early initiation of ANC seeking. The Departments of Health Promotion, Health Information Center and eHealth under the Ministry of Public Health, Cameroon, have to strengthen mass sensitisation programs on early ANC uptake and such programs should consider individual differences such as age, wealth status, education, and religious affiliation in its program design.