Compliance of Israeli Druze Women to Undergo a Non-Invasive Prenatal Test

Background: The Druze community Comprises 1.6% of the Israeli population, with most living in villages in northern Israel. Their religion is secret and is known only to religious Druze.

Aims: To examine the prevalence of Israeli Druze women undergoing a non-invasive prenatal test compared to Israeli Jewish women.

Study Design: This study appears a prospective case control study design

Place and Duration of Study: Israel, 6 months

Methodology: Seventy-six Druze and 66 Jewish women completed a questionnaire published in social media using Qualtrics software and analyzed with SPSS software.

Results: We found that the Israeli Jewish women underwent and were more familiar with non-invasive prenatal testing and other screening tests than the Israeli Druze women. Furthermore, after testing the entire women’s population, women living in the center of the country significantly underwent more prenatal testing than the women living in Israeli villages in the periphery of the country (Spearman correlation test). A positive correlation was found within the entire women’s population between undergoing a non-invasive prenatal test and the socioeconomic and educational status of the women; a negative correlation was found with the level of religiosity. All of the correlation tests were performed by the Spearman correlation test.

Conclusions: More health care professionals must provide further counseling and explanations in respect to the different prenatal diagnostic tests existing today, including this new advanced test which will most likely be the main prenatal test performed in the future on all populations, even for those living in the periphery.