Abstract:
Introduction: Maternal and child nutrition service of Health Extension Program (HEP) is one the straregies implementing by Ethiopia to overcome the problem of malnutrition. But to know and assure the effectiveness of the strategies evaluating beneficiaries about their acceptance and feeling for the program and assessing its benefit is very important. Objective: The aim of this study was to assess mothers’ willingness to pay and assocated factors for maternal and child nutrition service of health extension program in Yilmana Densa District, Northwest Ethiopia. Methods: A community based cross-sectional study design was conducted in Yilmana Densa District from March to April, 2017. Multistage stratified sampling technique was used to select 6 rural and 1 urban kebeles from a total of 28 rural and 5 urban kebeles respectivelly. Five hundred eighty four participants or households were selected from the selected kebeles by systematic random sampling technique. A pretested and modified semi-structured interviewer based questionnaire was used to collect the data. The data was entered into Epi-info 7 and analysed through STATA version 13. Tobit model was used to identify factors associated with willingness to pay and Regression coefficient (ß), t-value and p-value with 95% confidence level was used to measure the strength and presence of statistical association. Result: A total of 545 participants with the response rate of (93.3%) participated in the study. The finding indicates that 88.8 %( 95% CI= 86.1, 91.4) of mothers were willing to pay for maternal and child nutrition service of HEP. The average amount of money to pay per visit was 19.6 ETB ($0.84) (CI=18.7, 20.4). The tobit model analysis reveals that awareness (95% CI 6.25, 8.83;ß=7.54), age (95% CI -0.54, 0.40; ß=-0.47), pregnancy status (95% CI 4.70, 8.10; ß=6.4), educational status (95%CI 0.16, 3.17;ß=1.67), wealth index (95%CI 0.74, 3.45;ß=2.1), and self report satisfaction from the service (95%CI 1.85,4.84;ß=3.34) were identified as significant factors. Conclusion and recommendation: - In Yilmana Densa district majority of mothers (88.8%) were willing to pay for maternal and child nutritional service with average of 19.6 ETB. To increase the benefit of service it is good to focus on awareness creation about the service on beneficieries.
