Publication:

Infection prevention among pregnant women in the community by participating village health volunteers

Background Corona virus is an emerging disease that is spreading rapidly and spreading all over the world. Pregnant women are a risk group that needs to be monitored. This study aimed at learning about the self-protection behaviours of village health volunteers in preventing COVID-19 infections, roles and community management for preventing COVID-19 infections among pregnant women and studying the self-protection knowledge and behaviours of pregnant women in preventing COVID-19 infections.

Methods This study was mixed method research. The sample was 48 village health volunteers and 10 pregnant women. The research instruments consisted of questionnaires. This study was conducted in April-August 2021. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics, Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test, and Correlation (Kendall’s tau-b).

Results According to the findings, most of the village health volunteers had self-protection behaviours such as wearing masks, eating hot food, using private spoons, washing hands with soap, alcohol gel or sprays, maintaining social distancing and not entering community areas with COVID-19 outbreaks at a high level. Village health volunteer roles and community management with participation from village health volunteers to monitor, prevent and control COVID-19 outbreaks were at a high level (100%). In the area of pregnant women, most of the pregnant women had high overall knowledge of self-protection against COVID-19 infection in the area of COVID-19 infection prevention behaviours (=13.90, SD=0.73). Analysis of correlations found a positive correlation at the high level (r=0.770) with statistical significance (p=0.008). One pregnant woman was found to be infected with COVID-19 (10%).

Conclusions The findings showed There was a significant correlation between knowledge and behaviour in prevention of coronavirus 19 infection. Therefore, it is necessary to promote knowledge and behaviour in preventing corona virus 19 infection. to pregnant women continuously and effectively.