Factors Associated with Caesarean Deliveries in Rural Western Kenya

Introduction: Recent investments have shown that Caesarean Section (CS) has been on a steady increase for the past 25 years globally and risk factors associated with CS have been documented, yet there is still little knowledge on the Indications of CS in Siaya County, rural western Kenya. Hence, the aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence of Caesarean section and to identify the risk factors associated with CS delivery among pregnant women in Siaya County, Western Kenya. Methods: Proportions were used to estimate the prevalence of CS delivery. Multiple logistic regressions were used to determine various exposures for associations with the outcome variable, all exposures with p-value <0.05 were considered to be independently associated with the caesarean delivery. Results: This study detected an increase in the trend of caesarean births from 2015 to 2019 with an estimated prevalence of 6.63%. The results from the multivariate analyses indicated that history of hospitalization (ₐOR=2.39; 95% CI 1.45, 3.95; p<0.001), previous caesarean section (ₐOR=16.75; 95% CI 11.32, 24.79; p<0.001), gestation at Delivery (ₐOR=2.26; 95% CI 1.31-3.89; p<0.001) and obesity (ₐOR=2.12; 95% CI 0.83-5.43; p=0.12) increased the risk of caesarean delivery. Conclusion: Previous caesarean, history of hospitalization, gestation age at delivery and obesity were the main reasons leading to caesarean section.