Utilization of maternal health care services in slums of Lucknow, capital of Uttar Pradesh

Abstract

Maternal mortality is quite high in India despite of the tremendous efforts and extensive range of services provided through various national health programs. Maternal mortality can be brought down by increasing the utilisation of maternal health services.The objective of the present study was to assess the utilization of maternal health care services by recently delivered women in urban slums of Lucknow during their last pregnancy. A community basedcross-sectional study was conducted in urban slums of Lucknow city from February 2014 to September 2014. A total of 296 recently delivered women were interviewed through house to house survey with the help of pre-designed, pre-tested and semi-structured questionnaire.Among the 296 recently delivered women interviewed, about 68.2%were registered during their last pregnancy. More than half (63.5%) were registered during first trimester and 28.4% had done four or more antenatal visits. Two doses of tetanus toxoid injection and complete consumption of IFA tablets was seen in 70.9% and 9.8% of the mothers respectively. About 59.8% of the mothers had institutional delivery, whereas only 44.6% had four or more postnatal visits.No felt need was the major reason for non-registration (63.8%) while lack of awareness was found to be the major reason (79.1%) for late registration; while the major reason (45.7%) for incomplete/nil consumption of IFA tablet was the associated side effects.No felt need (62.2%) was the main reason for low number of institutional deliveries.It was concluded that there is a need to educate women regarding the importance of complete utilization of maternal health care services.