The Role of Pastors: Attitude of 193 Ante Natal Clinic Attendees towards Caesarean Section at the Rivers State University Teaching Hospital

Introduction: Caesarean section (Cs) is a surgical procedure carried out to prevent adverse maternal and fetal outcome.

Aversion to Cs may constitute a major obstacle to safe motherhood.

Some for pregnant women not accepting Cs are socio-cultural, religious, ethnic or economical.

Aim: Determine the attitude of the church in Nigeria and Pastors towards caesarean section, hence profer solution to the aversion to caesarean section.

Methods: It was a prospective study of ANC attendees at the RSUTH.

The information was coded and analyzed using SPSS version 25.

Results: A total of 200 questionnaires were distributed and 193 retrieved.

The mean age was 31 years. The modal parity was 2.

As regards level of education; respondents with no formal education were 5 (2.6%), primary 6 (3.1%), secondary 88 (45.6%) and tertiary 94 (48.7%). Fifty seven (30%) of the antenatal mothers had aversion for CS.

The reasons given were socio-cultural 25 (13%), religious 8 (4.1%), economic 7 (3.6), ethnic 4 (2.1%), combination of the above 17 (8.8%) and 132 (68.4%) did not respond.

Conclusion: The study revealed that the aversion for CS was 30% amongst antenatal clinic attendees at the RSUTH. Religious in this scenario were all Christians was 4.1 %, non-respondents were 68.4%.

Counselling and advocacy are needed to change the wrong perspective about CS by the Pastors to reduce maternal and perinatal mortality.