8. Original Scientific Paper
Abstract

India has made an impressive progress in maternal health outcomes in the past three decades. However, inequities in access as well as utilization of reproductive health care persist across dimensions such as geography, wealth and rural-urban status. The present study is an attempt to assess the utilization of maternal health care services and to determine the factors influencing the maternal health care utilization among the Pnar women in Nartiang village, West Jaintia Hills District, Meghalaya. Data pertaining to antenatal care, delivery characteristics, post natal care and family planning methods as well as socio-demographic factors such as current age, age at marriage, number of live births, education and income groups have been collected from a total of 429 ever-married women belong to the reproductive age groups of 15-49 years. The results indicate that majority of the women (i.e., 86.71%) attended antenatal care (ANC). It is found that mothers who attended at least three antenatal care check-ups were 59.67%, whereby 52.68% of the mothers registered their first antenatal care check-ups during second trimester. About 36.67% of the women underwent institutional delivery and only 10% of them attended postnatal care check-ups after delivery. The adoption of family planning methods was found to be very low i.e., only 16.78% of the mothers are using any family planning methods. The present findings reveal that although the antenatal utilization was good in the study population, institutional delivery, postnatal care and adoption of family planning methods was poor. Among the socio-demographic factors included in the regression analysis, age and education of women were found as the leading contributors in utilization of maternal health care services. Enhancing literacy among women and improving of health infrastructure and its quality may be prioritized to improve the maternal health of the Pnar women in Nartiang village.

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