Trend and determinants of home delivery in Gambia, evidence from 2013 and 2020 Gambia Demographic and Health Survey: A multivariate decomposition analysis

Abstract

Background Home delivery is defined as is an even of pregnant women getting giving birth in a woman her home or other homes without an unskilled health professional assistance. It is continuing as public health problem since its responsible for death of women and newborn. In Gambia there is a high maternal mortality rate, which may be related to home delivery. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the trend of home delivery and identify predictors using Gambia Demographic and Health Survey (GDHS) 2013 and 2019–2020 data sets. Methods A Cross-Section survey was conducted based on GDHS 2013 and 2019–2020 among reproductive age group women. A total of 8607 women participated in this study. A bivariate decomposition model was fitted, and variables that had a p-value > 0.25 were dropped. Finally, variables that got a p-value of < 0.05 with 95% confidence interval (CI) in the multivariate decomposition analysis were considered as statistical significance variables in the overall decomposition. Results There has been a dramatic decrement in maternal home delivery in Gambia. It was 36.18% (95% CI:34.78, 37.58) in 2013 GDHS and 14.39% (95% CI:13.31,15.47) in 2019–2020 GDHS. This reduction is real because there was a change in the characteristics effect of the population and the coefficient effect some variables in the home delivery. Changes in characteristics effect of husband education, women education, rural residents, more than three antenatal cares follow up, and no problem reaching health facilities played a significant role in the reduction of home delivery. Being urban resident and women who had occupation were variables that had a positive effect on coefficient effect change. Conclusion In this study, the home delivery rate had steeply declined in the Gambia during the study period of the two surveys. Just above nine-tenths decrement in home delivery rate resulted because there was a change in the characteristics effect of the study participants. Enhancing more citizens to attend high school and above, narrowing the gap between rural and urban in terms of accessing health facilities, and improving the availability of infrastructure should be done.