Outcome Evaluation of Fistula Care Project in Bench Sheko Zone, Southern Nations Nationalities, and Peoples' Region, Ethiopia, 2020

Background: Obstetric fistula is the most severe of pregnancy-related disabilities.While the condition has disappeared in developed countries, it remains a source of concern in Ethiopia and serves as a proxy indicator of the status of Ethiopian women and the availability and access to quality maternal health services.However, to our best knowledge, there was no evidence of the outcome of the fistula care project in the study setting.Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the outcome of the fistula care project on women's knowledge in Bench Sheko Zone, Ethiopia 2020. Methods: Quasi-experimental design with comparison groups post-test only was employed in Semen Bench as an intervention and Guraferda Woreda as a comparison group of Bench sheko Zone from February 15, 2020 to March 15, 2020.A multi-stage sampling technique was employed to select 284 women for intervention and 284 comparison group.The focus of this evaluation was the intermediate outcome of the fistula care project.Data were managed by using Kobo Collect v1.25.1 and Descriptive frequency, Bivariate, and Multivariate regression analyses were performed to examine the effects of intervention exposure by using Stata version 16.0. Conclusion and recommendation:Findings from this outcome evaluation shows that there are measurable differences between intervention and comparison woreda in terms of women's knowledge of obstetric fistula Cause, risk, symptom, prevention, and treatment of obstetric fistula.Also, significant differences were observed in the overall knowledge of obstetric fistula in the intervention area than the counterpart.Therefore, Community based intervention can increase women's knowledge and encourage the use of essential obstetric services.