Factors Influencing Acceptance of Caesarean Section Among Women of Reproductive Age in Comprehensive Health Centres in Akure South of Ondo State

                 Caesarean section (CS) is an alternative life-saving obstetric surgery. It has contributed to the reduction of maternal mortality and morbidity. Despite the known benefit of CS, there is reported evidence that women in Nigeria are reluctant to accept CS even in the face of obvious clinical indications. This study, therefore, sought to identify the various factors that are influencing the acceptance of Caesarean section among women of reproductive age. The methodology employed was a descriptive design. The population of the study constitutes Women of Reproductive age from the three Comprehensive Health Centers in Akure South local government area of Ondo State. The sample size was 400. The instrument of data collection was a Self-Structured Questionnaire with a Cronbach's alpha of 0.910. Convenient sampling techniques were employed and the data collected were analyzed with descriptive statistics and the hypothesis tested with logistic regression. The result revealed that 201(52.2%) accepted that CS is for women that are not physically strong, 165(42.8%) said that it is a taboo in their culture to have a baby through C/S, 240(62.3%) accepted that if they are prayerful they don’t need CS. It was revealed that culture influenced the acceptance of CS (P = 0.015) and a decrease in culture increases CS acceptance by 59.7%. Also, economic factors influenced the acceptance of CS (P=0.031). It was recommended among others that the government should ameliorate the burden of CS delivery by subsidizing the cost to encourage women to opt for this method of delivery if the need arises.

Keywords: Caesarean section, Acceptance, Cultural Factors, Economic Factors, Religious Factors,