Awareness and utilization of maternal and child health services amongst selected, eligible, rural women of Wardha district

Aims and objectives: (1) To assess awareness. (2) To assess utilization. (3) To identify gap between awareness and utilization. Materials and method: The present cross sectional study was carried out in rural area of central India from April 2015 to august 2015. 2000 antenatal women and those who had delivered within past one year of attending the OPD of dept of obgy, acharya vinobha behave rural hospital were included. Inclusion criteria 1) Antenatal women in 3 rd trimester. 2) Patient who have delivered within one year in our hospital as a booked, registered, unbooked cases. Data were obtained by the following method- A) through oral questionnaire method by interviewing the mothers for assessing their knowledge in relation to reproductive and child care services. B) semi structured questionnaire and their labour events were analysed to assess the utilization of services Results: In our study 2000 women were enrolled after getting written, informed consent.48% patients were under the age group of 20-25years, 43% cases belonged to the age group of 25-30years and 9% were above 30 years of age. 56.5% of women had received primary education, while 32.8% had received education till middle school, 7.2% had received education till high school and only 3.5% patients were graduate. Maximum patient’s i.e 38% belonged to class 3 socio economic group according to prasad classification. 50.9% patients lived in joint family. After assessing the knowledge about the services 17.15% patients had never heard about the service, 72.1% has some idea and 10.75% were fully aware. Source of information about the services was mainly through asha, anm workers 72%, neighbors and friends contributed to 16%, television 8% and newspaper 4%. 53.35% patients visited the hospital only twice for antenatal checkup, 41% patients visited thrice,31.2% visited more than four times and 5.65% visited only once. 56.3% patients had received health services through some or the other source, 31% cases had knowledge about jsy and only 31% knew about cash assistance provided, knowledge about registration during pregnancy was not known to many only 23% knew about it. Timing about 1st anc visit was known to 16.05%, timing about 2 nd visit was known to 63% as they were instructed during 1 st visit about when to visit next, 42.15% cases knew about 3rd visit. Knowledge about the first time of injection tt was to only 18.3%, and timing about 2 nd was known to 42%. 60% patients knew that they had to take iron, calcium and folic acid tablets during pregnancy and were available in the nearby health centers for free of cost. 21% cases knew about the tests to be done during pregnancy. 16% patients only knew about the importance of weight gain during pregnancy and its monitoring but only 8.9% patients knew what should be the ideal weight gain. Only 42% cases knew about the timing of therir post natal check up as they were instructed during discharge, 38% cases knew about the complications during post partum period.54% cases knew that they had to take additional calories during lactational period but how much was not known to many. 41% patients knew essential components of newborn care, only 37% patients knew the duration of exclusive breast feeding. 48.5% patients had availed the facility of family planning. Conclusion: In Maharashtra although Government is putting lot of effort for institutional delivery and good number of women were aware about maternal and child care health services, but still there is need to formulate strategies to fill this gap from awareness to utilization.