High proportion of women had poor knowledge about malaria in pregnancy preventive services though high proportions of them were satisfied with the services they are receiving. However, most of them were not satisfied with the interpersonal relationship with the health service providers and cost of healthcare services they received. Type of facility attended, and employment status remained as predictors of satisfaction in interpersonal and cost of services received.
The low level of knowledge found in this study could be due to the poor interpersonal relationship between the patients and the health workers. This contrasts with the study conducted in Ebonyi State where they found high level of knowledge among pregnant women.18 This was also inverse with the findings of a study conducted in the Federal Capital Territory, Northern Nigeria which reported that over 70% had good knowledge19 though the study was conducted among attendees in a tertiary institution. A dissimilar knowledge level was also found in Calabar, Cross River State in a study. 20 The difference in the findings of these studies with our study could be because they assessed general knowledge on malaria but our study looked at only knowledge of preventive services, which could also be why our study had similar findings with the study conducted in Lagos, South western Nigeria, where they found knowledge of malaria prevention among pregnant women and care givers and care givers of under-five.
The study found that just above half of the respondents to be satisfied with preventive services for malaria during pregnancy but many respondents were not satisfied with the interpersonal relationship and cost of healthcare. The non-satisfaction with interpersonal relationship could be due to the small number of health workers in the state, leading to high volume of patients for available personnel. This could shorten the time for the client health provider interaction or even lead to reduce quality of service provided. The interpersonal relationship is a major factor in a client experience in hospital service provision.
The high level of dissatisfaction with cost of healthcare could be attributed to the high cost of services due to non-availability of LLIN and IPTp provided by government. Generally, government provides these preventive interventions free through the public health facilities and some selected private health facilities. These services are often not available due to stock out or inefficiency the distribution network. The non-availability mean that clients will have to pay for these services often out of pocket. Without limited health insurance cover and out of pocket spending, it could easily tip pregnant women and their families into catastrophic health spending and hence the dissatisfaction. The relationship between cost of services and satisfaction with health services have earlier been reported.17
There is an overall high satisfaction with the process of care, environment and accessibility. This could be because patients attend ANC care where they are convinced is good for them. The findings from study conducted in a cottage hospital in Port Harcourt that assessed satisfaction with care in relation to antenatal care contrasted with our study.21 In this study, 94% of the respondents were satisfied. The lowest satisfaction score was in area of medical consultation, which is comparable with findings from our study, even though this study was conducted in only one hospital. Oladapo et al. in assessing quality of antenatal care in primary health facilities in southwest Nigeria got high satisfaction of 81.1% which also contrasts with our study.22 Nwaeze et al. at Ibadan got a satisfaction score of 81.1 % among pregnant women attending ANC at a public hospital. 15 The difference in our findings could be because their study was conducted in only one hospital. In Ethiopia, Ejigu et al (2013), in studying Quality of antenatal care services at public health facilities of Bahir-Dar special zone, Northwest Ethiopia found that 47.7% of women were not satisfied. The findings from this study are comparable to the findings in our study.
The positive association found between private health facility and satisfaction in interpersonal domain could be explained by the fact that doctors in private facilities take special care in order not to lose their clients but those in public facilities have a care free attitude because their salaries does not depend on the number of clients available. This association is the reverse when it comes to the relationship between private facilities and cost of healthcare. Possible explanation of this is that private hospitals are generally more expensive than the public hospitals and they do not benefit most times from free commodities supplied to the public facilities. Poor knowledge was also positively associated with satisfaction in the cost of healthcare. Clients are possibly going to be satisfied with what they are offered if they have poor idea of what they are supposed to get. This contrasts with the study conducted by Do et al. in Kenya and Namibia, where they assessed satisfaction with antenatal care. In the study most demographic characteristics were significantly associated with satisfaction.23 The difference could be due to geographical location and cultural differences. The difference could also be because we are looking at malaria in pregnancy services, which is just a part of what is offered in antenatal clinic. Our finding was similar to finding in a study on satisfaction among pregnant women towards antenatal care in public and private care clinics in Khartoum; attending private health facility was positively associated with satisfaction. 24
Information bias is one of the major limitations associated with satisfaction surveys. Dunsch et al. in identifying pitfalls of client satisfaction found about 40% drop in satisfaction if questionnaire was administered at home rather than as client exit. They also found a difference in satisfaction level when questionnaires contain only positively framed questions in relation to positive and negative framed questions.25 In this study, we tried to reduce this bias by framing positive and negative questions but we collected the data as exit interview due to the cost of visiting each patients home to collect data. Another limitation was finding studies that have worked on satisfaction with preventive services provided for malaria during pregnancy, so we compared our study with finding from studies conducted in quality of antenatal care in the same target population.