Background: One of the efforts to reduce maternal mortality is the implementation of antenatal care (ANC) visits during pregnancy. Routine ANC visits are crucial for monitoring the health of pregnant women and their fetuses. However, data from the past five years show that the number of ANC visits has not met targets in several regions of Indonesia, including Padang City, West Sumatra Province. This study aims to assess the status of ANC visits of pregnant women and associated factors.
Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 142 third-semester pregnant women in Padang City, West Sumatra Province, Indonesia. A validated questionnaire was used to obtain information about the respondents’ characteristics, ANC visits, and associated factors. The data were analyzed using a Chi-squared test and multivariate logistic regression.
Results: Most pregnant women have completed all ANC visits (63.4%), but knowledge remains lacking (66.2%), and attitudes toward prenatal visits are largely negative (54.2%). The logistic regression results show that only the respondent’s knowledge variables significantly affect the completeness of ANC visits [P=0.005; odds ratio (OR) =3.253; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.433–7.386]. However, attitudes, age, parity, education level, working status, economic status, access to healthcare services, family support, and health worker support were not significantly associated (P=0.06, 0.39, 0.69, 0.59, 0.70, >0.99, 0.10, >0.99, 0.36, respectively).
Conclusions: Efforts are needed to increase pregnant women’s knowledge about ANC by optimizing the role of health workers and cadres in promoting ANC more extensively, both directly and through social media, and by increasing maternal literacy through reading the Mother and Child Health handbook. A government policy is needed to ensure that pregnant women complete their ANC visits, not solely for the purpose of claiming delivery costs.
