A new study by researchers from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi (KNUST) has found that pregnant women who complete at least eight antenatal care (ANC) contacts are significantly less likely to experience adverse birth outcomes, reinforcing the World Health Organization’s recommendation for more frequent maternal health visits.

Published in Global Epidemiology, the study analyzed delivery records from 2,185 women at Juaben Government Hospital between 2021 and 2023.

The findings showed that mothers who completed eight or more ANC visits had a 31 per cent lower risk of low birth weight and a 54 per cent lower risk of preterm birth compared with women who attended fewer than eight visits.

The research team includes experts from the University Hospital and the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the School of Public Health, underscoring the university’s growing role in generating evidence to strengthen maternal and newborn healthcare in Ghana.

Using advanced causal inference methods such as propensity score matching, inverse probability weighting, and doubly robust analysis, the researchers strengthened confidence in the association between frequent ANC attendance and improved neonatal outcomes.

The consistency of the findings across multiple statistical models suggests that increasing ANC attendance can produce measurable public health benefits, particularly in resource-constrained settings.

The study comes at a critical time as Ghana and many countries in sub-Saharan Africa continue efforts to reduce maternal and neonatal mortality in line with Sustainable Development Goal 3, which seeks to ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all.

According to the researchers, the benefits of frequent antenatal visits likely stem from repeated opportunities for women to receive essential services such as malaria prevention, iron and folic acid supplementation, nutritional counselling, blood pressure monitoring, and early detection of pregnancy complications.

The findings also highlight the importance of early ANC booking, continuity of care, and improved service quality, especially at district-level health facilities where maternal care remains the first point of contact for many women.

The study concludes that scaling up access to the WHO-recommended eight-contact ANC model could significantly improve maternal and newborn outcomes across Ghana and similar low-resource settings.