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Primary Health Care during the COVID-19 pandemic in Fortaleza, Brazil: associated factors and pattern of use by mothers and children up to 18 months of age

2022; ASSOCIAÇÃO BRASILEIRA DE SAÚDE COLETIVA; Volume: 25; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1590/1980-549720220036

1980-5497

Luciano Lima Correia, Márcia Maria Tavares Machado, David Augusto Batista Sá Araújo, Yuri Valentim Carneiro Gomes, Maria Suelly Nogueira Pinheiro, Hermano Alexandre Lima Rocha, Denise Lima Nogueira, Geziel dos Santos de Sousa, Simone Farías-Antúnez, Márcia C. Castro,

Global Maternal and Child Health

To analyze the delay or failure to seek primary health care by the mother-child dyads during the COVID-19 pandemic, a practice that has a high potential to increase maternal and child morbidity and mortality.Data from three survey rounds of the Iracema-COVID cohort study, collected 6, 12, and 18 months after birth, showed the patterns of postpartum attendance to primary health care consultation of the mother-child dyad. Crude and adjusted multinomial logistic regressions with robust variance were used to assess factors associated with nonattendance.Among the 314 cohort mothers, 25% did not attend any primary health care consultation during the 18-months postpartum, while 30% of the mothers did all three. Regarding the child, 75% had regular primary health care consultations in all three survey rounds, while 4% did not attend any in their first 18 months of life. By the end of the first COVID-19 wave, the proportion of mother and child who attended the consultations had fallen by 23 and 18%, respectively. The main factors associated with nonattendance were mothers aged below 25 years, and mothers with more than one child.An important delay or nonattendance to primary health care consultation by the mother-child dyad was observed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Such practice, with a high potential to increase maternal and child morbidity and mortality, was particularly frequent among younger mothers and those with more than one child.