Sarcouncil Journal of Medicine and Surgery

Abstract: Background: The mother and child wellbeing depend on female’s health even before pregnancy occur in which modifiable risk factors can be addressed in physical, psychological and social aspects which called the preconception care.Objective: To assess women’s knowledge, attitude and practice about the preconception care in Al-Hilla health sectors. Methods: Across-sectional study was conducted on 245 women attending the primary health care centers in Al-Hilla health sectors /Babylon. The data collection was conducted from 1st of February 2023 to the 31th of August 2023. A questionnaire was used for data collection. It consists of four sections, the 1st includes socio-demographic information, and the 2nd, 3rd and 4th sections assess the knowledge, attitude and practice of the participants respectively. Data was analyzed using SPSS program version 26, and a statistically significant level was determined at P ?0.05. Results: In this study, we found more than half of the women have good knowledge about preconception care (56.73%), (32.65%) had fair knowledge and (10.61%) had poor knowledge. Good attitude was found in (77.96%) and good practice in (59.18%). Age above twenty years, higher education number of children and marital status were significantly associated with knowledge, attitude and practice. The attitude and practice were significantly associated with the knowledge level. Conclusion: Women in Al-Hillahave good knowledge, good attitude and good practice about the preconception care despite that only half of women were aware about preconception care. Attitude and practice have significant association with the knowledge.