MATERNAL HEALTH CARE UTILIZATION IN RURAL FIELD PRACTICE AREA OF DR. PSIMS&RF, KRISHNA DISTRICT, ANDHRA PRADESH, SOUTH INDIA.

Corresponding Author:
Dr. Bhaskari Kolli,
Assistant Professor,
Department of Community Medicine,
Guntur Medical College, Andhra Pradesh, India.
E-mail: bhaskarikolli@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND

Maternal mortality and morbidity continue to be high despite the enormous inputs and efforts imposed through National Health Programmes, to achieve good results for the fifth goal of Millennium Development. There has been very little improvement in the institutional deliveries from NFHS-I (26.1) to NFHS-III (40.8). Underutilization of the Maternal Health Services might be one of the causes for this slow progress.

Aims and Objectives-

1. To assess the proportion of women receiving the recommended antenatal care.
2. To know the proportion of women who received skilled care during childbirth.
3. To study the knowledge and practice of different family planning methods.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Study Design- Community based cross sectional study.

Study Population- Mothers of infants.

Study Setting- Three villages were selected by simple random technique from the 9 villages of rural field practice area of Dr. PSIMS&RF. All the eligible mothers for the study (235), in those villages were interviewed using pretested structured questionnaire. Data thus collected was compiled and analysed.

Study Period- October-December 2014.

RESULTS

Of the 235 women, 11.06% are teenage pregnancies, 94.46% had at least one antenatal checkup during pregnancy. Only 53.19% are consuming iron and folic acid tablets. Majority of them are institutional deliveries (94.2%). 57% have undergone permanent family planning methods of which only 2 % were vasectomies. 63 of the study participants are not using any kind of family planning.

CONCLUSION

Though the utilization of antenatal and intranatal care services has improved, there is still a lacuna in utilization of different family planning methods. In spite of increased availability of family planning services, most of them are not practicing to the expected level. This gap can be reduced by improving the accessibility of the RCH services and through behaviour change and communication for transforming knowledge into practice.

KEY WORDS

Maternal Health, Antenatal Care, Institutional Delivery, Family Planning.