Impact of communication on the awareness of birth defects among adult women in Nigeria

INTRODUCTION

Birth defects are a group of universal problem whose impact on pediatric morbidity and mortality is particularly severe in developing countries. About 94% of children born with birth defects in these countries have associated life-long disabilities and very high mortality.^[1,2] It is estimated that the incidence of major birth defects is about 2–3% of all live births. The burden of birth defect is enormous to the government and the families of the affected patients as they are responsible for up to 30% of all pediatric hospital admissions.^[3] Although the etiology is unknown, several myths and beliefs which are peculiar to different cultures and often erroneous have been suggested to increase the vulnerability of a fetus to birth defects during pregnancy.^[4] However, environmental exposures to teratogens, underlying medical risk factors in pregnant mothers, economic, ethnic, and other factors, are suggested predisposing factors to their occurrence in newborn babies. These factors are believed to account for the global variations in the incidence of these birth defects.^[5] Thus, infant mortality from birth defects is reportedly low and is about 1% in Canada and Ireland^[6,7] but varied between 5.7% and 14% in the United States of America.^[8] Conversely, the mortality is high in developing countries, although some associated risk factors have been attributed to this.^[9,10]

The efforts at reducing infant mortality due to birth defects in Western countries have gone through various stages, and these include mounting surveillance for congenital diseases, improvement of perinatal diagnosis of birth defects, providing appropriate methods of treatment for newborns with birth defects, and raising public awareness through health education on ways of reducing the occurrence of birth defects among other things.^[2]

In educating the public about birth defects, appropriate use of the media is important as proper attention should be paid to the cultural beliefs and values of the people in any given community. Public education may also involve interpersonal communication and community meetings that seek to raise the awareness of the people.^[11] This study aimed at investigating the level of awareness of mothers about birth defects, the factors attributed to these defects and the impact of the media on efforts to raise this awareness among women living in a typical urban area in Southwest Nigeria.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

This was a descriptive cross-sectional study of women from different socioeconomic, cultural, educational, and marital backgrounds. The study was conducted in Ibadan metropolis using the Outpatient Clinics of University College Hospital, Ibadan, and Adeoyo Maternity Hospital, Ibadan, Nigeria, from March to October 2019. Purposive sampling technique was used to select 768 respondents who have had pregnancy before to respond to a structured self-administered questionnaire and 10 women whose child had been treated for a birth defect before for in-depth interview. Excluded from the study are women who refused to give consent to be enlisted in the study.

Following an informed consent, the structured self-administered questionnaire translated into the local languages was distributed to the participants to collect information on their sociodemographic details such as age, occupation, marital status, educational status, religion, number of pregnancies they had before, and other related questions. Furthermore, information regarding women’s knowledge and causes of birth defects; its prevention and treatment and the role of the media in educating people about birth defects were collected. An in-depth interview guide was also used to interview women whose children have been managed for a congenital anomaly or the other before to determine their level of awareness of the causes of birth defects and obtain their opinions regarding the role of the media in the awareness campaigns on birth defects. The data were collected, analyzed, and reported in a confidential manner. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize data as appropriate. Tests of association between sociodemographic variables and awareness of presence of birth defects were performed using Chi-square statistics. The level of statistical significance was set at 5%. All analyses were performed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences Version 23.0 for Windows.

RESULTS

A total of 768 women aged 17–75 years completed the questionnaire, with a mean of 33.53 ± 8.95 years. Respondents in the third and fourth decades of life constitute more than three-quarters (600, 78.1%) of the women. The participants were predominantly skilled workers (430, 56.0%) and a large proportion of them were married (709, 92.3%). Fifteen (2.0%) participants had no formal education whereas 484 (63.0%) were educated beyond the 12^th grade. All the participants except 25 (3.3%) have had at least one pregnancy before and a high proportion (737, 96.0%) of them had attended antenatal clinic for all their pregnancies [Table 1].

About three-quarters (577, 75.1%) of the participants have heard about birth defects before. Of this, 348 (45.3%) women became aware during their routine antenatal care visits, 134 (17.4%) through the mass media, 90 (11.8%) women became aware through interpersonal communication with their friends, colleagues at work, and their husbands, and 3 (0.4%) through various meetings of their religious organizations [Table 2]. A total of 499 (65.0%) women believed that the media were helping in educating the populace about the prevalence of the various birth defects.

DISCUSSION

Awareness of birth defects is more likely to be high among older, more matured respondents, skilled workers, and educated women. It was also observed that women who have had more than 1 pregnancy and had antenatal care in the hospital for these pregnancies showed good knowledge and awareness about the prevalence of birth defects. A finding that agrees with the responses of the women interviewed. During the routine antenatal care visits in many maternity centers in this environment, these women are repetitively taught about the occurrence of birth defects and what could be done to prevent or treat them. A high proportion of the participants (75.1%) was aware and has heard that a child could be born with a defect. Mavrou et al.^[12] observed that better awareness of birth defects was associated with older age, better education, and high socioeconomic status. Older age is a reflection of greater experience and maturity where women in the fourth decade of life were most aware of birth defects and it is likely that such women or mothers would have interacted with friends whose babies had birth defects previously. Although, religion, education, and socioeconomic status are important determinants of enlightenment in any society,^[13] the role of interpersonal communication through passage of information among friends, colleagues at work, and door-to-door campaign should not be overlooked as it has been shown in this study that awareness was enhanced through interpersonal communication by 11.8% which is almost similar to 17.4% produced by the mass media.

The WHO (2008) observed that birth defects account for about 25 million disability-adjusted life years worldwide and are a major part of the global burden of disease in children.^[14] This is made worse by the increase in incidence of birth defects, especially in the developing countries.^[15] Against the backdrop of these reports, it is important for all stakeholders to come up with strategies both at the country level and the level of international organizations to reduce the burden of birth defects among children. Enlightenment campaigns that will provide information about the existence of a problem in any community are believed to assist people to change their attitudes toward the problem to solve the problem.^[16,17] This, however, can be achieved by the use of the mass media. Thus, the mass media can create awareness to change people’s behavior. In the Indian population, it is believed that social class, consanguinity of marriage, parity, and urban or rural status are significantly associated with congenital malformations,^[18] whereas the typical belief in Nigeria is that the occurrence of birth defect in a child is a punishment from the gods as the mother dared to walk in the midday sun or late in the night when the evil spirits who are agents of these gods usually move around, during pregnancy.^[19-21] The consequence of this is that children with birth defects are taken as bad omen to the family and they are either concealed or neglected while some other people may consult the revered traditional healers to perform rituals before they are taken to the hospital for treatment.^[22,23] This may account for the delay in presentation in the hospital often experienced in this environment. Although more than two-thirds of the respondents believed that the media have been helping to create awareness in the people about birth defects, the awareness was not enough to change their beliefs, attitudes, and behavior toward children with birth defects. In spite of the media awareness, these erroneous beliefs and attitudes are still being reinforced and passed down from one generation to another, suggesting that the media are not doing enough to demystify birth defects by focusing on the traditional beliefs on causes and predisposing factors of birth defects to improve awareness and subsequently reduce the incidence of birth defects. The lack of adequate knowledge about the burden of birth defects by the relevant stakeholders (government and non-governmental organizations) may also be responsible for this. They are most likely unwilling to commit their resources to areas where they know very little or nothing about in the areas of etiology and predisposing factors of birth defects. The resultant effect of this is that people will stick to their cultural beliefs with no proper sense of responsibility to treat or prevent birth defects. The government is expected to work with the media to enlighten people about their policies on health care and financing including the various measures adopted to reduce the incidence of birth defects in children.

CONCLUSION

The level of awareness about birth defects is good; it is improving with age, better education, and with skilled workers. However, the level of awareness can be improved to demystify the causes of birth defects. Appropriate education and public health enlightenment campaign targeting younger women or mothers from lower socioeconomic class is suggested to improve awareness in developing countries. Furthermore, improving healthy behaviors should be the focus of policy-makers and opinion leaders through strategically planned communication. Therefore, effective communication activities must be well-designed, well-planned, and properly aligned to national priorities as well as community needs to achieve the desired effects of reducing the prevalence of birth defects.