ArticlePloS one2025
Time to first antenatal care contact and pooled prevalence among reproductive-age women in East Africa: Log-logistic shared frailty model.
Article in PloS one, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundAntenatal care (ANC), the provision of prenatal healthcare by skilled medical practitioners, is essential for ensuring the well-being of pregnant women and their fetuses. It reduces maternal and child morbidity and mortality. However, there is a lack of comprehensive, region-wide analyses of ANC initiation, particularly across diverse East African countries. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the time to first antenatal care and its associated factors in East African countries.
methodsDemographic and Health Survey (DHS) data from 2012-2022 consisting of 12 countries were extracted. A total of 93,213 weighted reproductive-age women (15-49 years) were included in this study. A Kaplan-Meier survivor curve was generated to estimate the time of the first antenatal care contact. A log-rank test was used to compare the difference in survival curves. The log-logistic gamma shared frailty model was selected based on the reduced Akaike and Bayesian Information Criteria, and Cox-Snell residual plot. The shared frailty model was utilized to capture the correlation of outcomes within clusters (countries), as individuals within the same country may experience similar risks.
resultsThe pooled prevalence of women with a minimum of 4 ANC contacts in East African countries was 57.7% (95% CI: (49.9-65.1%). The variability in effect sizes of ANC utilization across included countries is estimated at [Formula: see text] 0.2032 [95% CI: 0.1111-0.6611]. The overall median time to the first antenatal care contact was 4 months. The log-logistic shared frailty model showed that place of residence [ϕ = 1.014, 95% CI: (1.006, 1.021)], maternal age [ϕ = 0.978, 95% CI: (0.970, 0.980)], women's education level [ϕ = 0.964, 95% CI: (0.952, 0.971)], marital status [ϕ = 0.970, 95% CI: (0.963, 0.978)], wealth index [ϕ = 0.990, 95% CI: (0.982, 0.997)], healthcare distance [ϕ = 0.975, 95% CI: (0.969, 0.980)], and parity [ϕ = 1.111, 95% CI: (1.093, 1.129)] were significant determinants of time at first antenatal care visit.
conclusionWomen in East Africa initiated their first ANC visit later than the optimal period recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). The positive correlation between early ANC initiation and access to media, healthcare access, and educational attainment may be utilized to promote increased early engagement in ANC services. Thus, governments and other responsible bodies should strive to implement programs to enhance access to healthcare and education, particularly for women living in rural areas, to improve the early initiation of antenatal care visits.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.