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Womens Status, Household Structure and the Utilization of Maternal Health Services in Haryana (India) |
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PP: 1-10 |
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doi:10.18576/jsapl/040101
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Author(s) |
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Krishna Kumar Pandey,
R. D. Singh,
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Abstract |
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| In developing world, women suffer from complications of pregnancy and delivery and maternal health care service utilization is much below the acceptable level. Maternal and child welfare goals couldnt be achieved without improving the status of women in the family and society as well. An effort has been made in this study to assess the effect of womens status, and household structure on utilization of maternal health care services in Haryana. Methods:- Data was taken from the third round of National Family Health Survey (NFHS-III) which is a national representative survey of women in the 15-49 years age groups. The sample used for this study comprised those women who had at least one birth in five year prior to the survey. To estimate the effect of the womens status and household structure variables on maternal health service utilization three outcome variables were used which were use of antenatal care services, place of delivery and use of assistance during delivery by health professional. Moreover, dichotomous variable i.e. place of residence was used to control for the accessibility and availability of maternal health services. Logistic regression technique was practiced to estimate models of the outcome variables. Separate models were also done for the urban and rural women since this group differs in many ways. In addition to this a probability model was done to estimate the probability of use of the services by selected variables from the logistic regression model. Result:- The result showed that only 34% of the women births in India take place in health facilities while 66% received assistance during delivery from skilled provider. Utilization of maternal health services was significantly low among rural women as compared to their urban counterparts. In the logistic regression model educational status of the mother, maternal autonomy and household wealth were found to be strong indicators of utilization of maternal health care services in Haryana. Antenatal care use was found to be a strong indicator of place of delivery and received assistance during delivery by a skilled provider. Women with secondary/higher level of education have substantially higher probabilities of receiving assistance from a modem source at delivery compared with women with primary education. Conclusion:-To increase womens utilization of basic health care services and improve maternal health in Haryana some crucial steps should be taken on educating women and strengthening antenatal care services. Great attention should be given to the most vulnerable group of women in the state this includes those who are living in rural areas with no education and in the low economic status group. |
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