Illness recognition and appropriate care seeking for newborn complications in rural Oromia and Amhara regional states of Ethiopia

Background Ethiopia has made significant progress in reducing child mortality but newborn mortality has stagnated at around 29 deaths per 1000 births. The Maternal Health in Ethiopia Partnership (MaNHEP) was a 3.5-year implementation project aimed at developing a community-oriented model of maternal and newborn health in rural Ethiopia and to position it for scale up. In 2014, we conducted a case study of the project focusing on recognition of and timely biomedical care seeking for maternal and newborn complications. In this paper, we detail the main findings from one component of the case study – the narrative interviews on newborn complications. Methods The study area, comprised of six districts in which MaNHEP had been implemented, was located in the two most populous federal regions of Ethiopia, Oromia and Amhara. The final purposive sample consisted of 16 cases in which the newborn survived to 28 days of life, and 13 cases in which the newborn died within 28 days of life, for a total sample size of 29 cases. Narrative interview were conducted with the main caregiver and several witnesses to the event. Analysis of the data included thematic content analysis and the determination of care seeking pathways and levels and timeliness of biomedical care seeking. Results Mothers and other witnesses do recognize certain symptoms of newborn illness which they often mentioned in clusters. The majority considered the symptoms to be serious and in some case hopeless. Perceived causes were mostly natural. Forty-one percent of care seekers sought timely biomedical care in the neonatal period. Surprisingly, perceived severity did not necessarily trigger care seeking. Facilitators of biomedical care seeking included accessibility of health facilities and counseling by health workers, whereas barriers included perceived vulnerability of newborns, post-partum restrictions on movements, hopelessness, wait-and-see atttitudes, poor communication and physical inaccessibility of health facilities. Conclusions Symptom recognition and care seeking patterns indicate the need to strengthen focused locally relevant health messages which target mothers, fathers and other community members, to further enhance access to health care and to improve referral and quality of care.