Assessment of the level of male involvement in safe motherhood in southern Nigeria.

Pregnancy and the events surrounding it are generally viewed as feminine issues exclusively for women. In sub-Saharan Africa, believing that pregnancy and the events that follow are guided by nature, a lot of superstition is attributed in the event of complications, which result in poor maternal outcomes. Maternal mortality remains a public health challenge worldwide, and Nigeria has one of the highest levels of maternal mortality in the world (545 per 100,000 live births). The involvement of men in ensuring and enhancing maternal health was a great idea hatched at the Cairo conference in 1994, but since then, not much has been done in practical terms in most of the developing world. This study is aimed at assessing the level of male involvement in their spouses' reproductive health events before pregnancy, during pregnancy, delivery and peuperium. A descriptive cross-sectional study design in which questionnaires were incorporated with an in-depth interview was used and a multistage sampling technique was used to select respondents. After house numbering, a total of 400 houses were selected from a cluster of four quarters in Patani Town. Participants were systematically sampled from each household using random number table. Results from data collected on the study indicated that (61.1 %) of men were aware of maternal health issues and the level of education was shown to have significant relationship (χ² = 5.139, df = 3, p = 0.162) with the knowledge of maternal health issues. Though the level of male involvement in safe motherhood was shown to be of good proportion, strategies to create awareness on male support for their parous spouses should be given a broader frontier, both in clinics, household and community levels. Men should be more involved than before, as they have a priceless role to play towards a significant improvement in maternal health. The Government, development partners and NGOs at all levels should be committed with a strong political will in this regard.