Cultural Malpractice and its Associated Factors During Pregnancy, Child Birth and Postnatal Period Among Women’s Who Give Birth Once at Dire Dawa City Administration, Eastern Ethiopia, 2021

Background: Cultural malpractices are defined as traditional practices which negatively affect the physical, sexual, and socio-economic participation of women and children. It is responsible for the annual deaths of 303,000 mothers and 2.7 million newborns globally. In developing countries, it accounts for about 5–15% of maternal deaths. In Ethiopia, about 18% of infant deaths occur due to cultural practice, and 52% of pregnant mothers give birth at home following cultural customs in Dire Dawa city. Objective: To assess cultural malpractices and associated factors during pregnancy, childbirth, and the postnatal period in women who gave birth once in Dire Dawa, 2021. Methodology: Community-based mixed study was conducted. A total of 624 study participants were selected through a systematic random sampling technique, and a purposive sampling method was used for qualitative data. Data was entered into Epi Data version 4.1 and exported to SPSS version 24 for analysis. Bivariate and multivariate analysis was done and the degree of association was measured by using the odds ratio with 95% CI and significance was declared at a p-value of < 0.05. The qualitative data was analyzed thematically using ATLAS-ti version 7. Results: Theoverall prevalence of cultural malpractice during the perinatal period was 74.6% (462). Women over the age of 35 were nearly three times more likely [AOR 2.61, 95% CI, 1.455-4.722] to commit cultural malpractice than women aged 15–24 and 25–34. No ANC follow-up were nearly four times more likely to commit cultural malpractice [AOR 3.577, 95% CI, 1.72-7.408], absence health education were nearly two times more likely to commit cultural malpractice [AOR 1.83, 95%CI, 1.25–2.67], and women whose culture allows harmful traditional practices were nearly two times more likely to commit cultural malpractices than their counterparts [AOR 1.69, 95%CI, 1.29–2.54]. Conclusion and Recommendations: In this study, nearly three-fourths of participants were involved in cultural malpractices during the perinatal period.