Case on Indian Muslim Mother’s Healthcare Utilisation: Its Patterns, Trends and Comparison

Abstract

Despite well-acclaimed progress in numerous areas, India is still struggling to overcome the basic maternal mortality problem. Maternal mortality rate (MMR) is continuing to be an awful issue since decades. An important proximate determinant of maternal mortality is access and use of quality healthcare services. So in order to reduce the MMR, it is quite mandatory to maintain high quality of maternal healthcare utilisation. This article highlights maternal healthcare utilisation in terms of 'antenatal care' (ANC), 'institutional delivery' and 'professional assistance at home delivery'. Muslim women are lagging behind the women of other religions in terms of socioeconomic status. In view of the above, this article studies the patterns, determinants of maternal healthcare utilisation among Muslims and also strive to analyse differentials with national average and mothers of other religions. Data have been used from the three National Family

Has Muslim Got Benefited from the National Health Mission? A Situational Analysis of Maternal Health Services in India

“…The National Health Mission (NHM) 2005 was a great endeavour of the Government of India to improve the maternal and child healthcare services and to reduce the gap among various religious groups in the country. Researches from national and global levels have tried to examine the low utilization of MCH services among Muslims compared to Hindus ( 12 ). The question has raised weather this NHM has played an instrumental role in increasing the maternal health services among Muslims.…”

“…The factors like education, media exposure and wealth were positively associated with maternal health services. Educated Muslim women were more likely to utilize all three maternal health indicators compared to uneducated women ( 12 , 24 , 25 ). Women who had media exposure were 1.74 times, 1.43 times and 1.37 times more likely to utilize full antenatal care, skilled attendants at birth and postnatal care respectively ( 12 , 25 , 26 ).…”

“…Further, the results indicate that rich women were utilizing more maternal healthcare services compared to the poor, and they were, 3.36 (p<0.001) times, and 3.26 (p<0.001) times more likely to utilize skilled attendants at birth, and postnatal care respectively in India. (12). The question has raised weather this NHM has played an instrumental role in increasing the maternal health services among Muslims.…”

“…However, social, economic and cultural differences are considered to be responsible for the low utilization of maternal healthcare services among Muslims ( 10 ). The researchers like Caldwell and Miller favoured the low education and low female autonomy to be the associated factors for substandard maternal care among Muslims ( 11 ) while some ( 12 ) have considered low standard of living and economic conditions responsible for the same.…”

Maternal Healthcare in Rural Uttar Pradesh: Influence of free Services on Healthcare-Seeking behaviour of Women

“…A major known reason for continuing high MMR ratios in the Global South is that rural women face low or limited access and poor utilisation of maternal healthcare services. For various parts of India, this is reported in numerous studies, which often also identify various determinants of maternal healthcare services during and after pregnancy (Ahmed et al, 2010; Chimankar & Sahoo, 2011; Das et al, 2016; Gabrysch & Campbell, 2009; Navaneetham & Dharmalingam, 2002; Patil et al, 2002; Saxena et al, 2013; Singh et al, 2012, 2014). Similar problems have been researched in Afghanistan (Shahram et al, 2015), Bangladesh (Nahar & Costello, 1998) and Nepal (Mehata et al, 2017).…”