Background:Making perinatal care accessible to women in marginalized periurban areas poses a public health problem. Many women do not utilize institutional care in spite of physical accessibility. Home-based care by traditional birth attendants (TBA) is hazardous. Inappropriate early neonatal feeding practices are common. Many barriers to perinatal care can be overcome by social mobilization and capacity building at the community level.Objectives:To determine the existing perinatal practices in an urban slum and to identify barriers to utilization of health services by mothers.Study Design:This is a cross-sectional descriptive study.Setting and Participants:The high-risk periurban areas of Nabi Nagar, Aligarh has a population of 40,000 living in 5,480 households. Mothers delivering babies in September 2007 were identified from records of social mobilization workers (Community Mobilization Coordinators or CMCs) already working in an NGO in the area. A total of 92 mothers were interviewed at home. Current perinatal practices and reasons for utilizing or not utilizing health services were the topics of inquiry.Statistical Analysis:Data was tabulated and analyzed using SPSS 12.Results:Analyses revealed that 80.4% of mothers had received antenatal care. However, this did not translate into safe delivery practices as more than 60% of the women had home deliveries conducted by traditional untrained or trained birth attendants. Reasons for preferring home deliveries were mostly tradition (41.9%) or related to economics (30.7%). A total of 56% of the deliveries were conducted in the squatting position and in 25% of the cases, the umbilical cord was cut using the edge of a broken cup. Although breast-feeding was universal, inappropriate early neonatal feeding practices were common. Prelacteal feeds were given to nearly 50% of the babies and feeding was delayed beyond 24 hours in 8% of the cases. Several mothers had breastfeeding problems.Conclusion:Barriers to utilization of available services leads to hazardous perinatal practices in urban slums.
There was a significant impact of BCC package on the behavior of pregnant women regarding neonatal care.
Background: A woman's contraceptive use is largely infl uenced by the dictates of her religious faith. Acceptance of family planning methods is usually found to be poor among Muslims. This study assesses how acceptance of contraception and contraceptive choices varies across various religious groups. Objectives: (1) To determine the prevalence of contraceptive use among various religious groups. (2) To study the contraceptive use pattern among different religious groups. Materials and Methods: The study was conducted among ever-married women (15-49 years) residing in the fi eld practice areas of Department of Community Medicine, Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College, Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh. The study was a community-based cross-sectional study. Current use and ever-use of contraceptives were assessed among women from various religious groups. The contraceptive choice among current users from different religious groups was studied in relation to use of spacing and terminal methods. Results: Current use of family planning methods was similar for Hindus (43.1%) and Muslims (44.1%). However, ever-use of contraception was found to be more among Muslims (72%) than Hindus (50.6%). Spacing methods were more popular among Muslim couples (84.3%) compared to Hindus (71.7%), whereas larger number of Hindu couples preferred terminal methods (28.3%) compared to Muslims (15.7%). Conclusions: Religion does play a role in the adoption of family planning and the specifi c method adopted for contraception. Abstract Access this article onlineWebsite: www.ijmedph.org
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