Maternal Health Care Situation in Nepal (A Case Study of Samundra Devi VDC, Nuwakot)

Abstract

This descriptive type of study has been carried out with the purpose of accessing the maternal health practices among reproductive age women who have child below 5 years of old. This study is based on primary data collected from Samundra Devi VDC of Nuwakot District. The main objectives of the studyis to find out the maternal health care practices of women of reproductive age. In this study many aspects of antenatal care,delivery care and postnatal care are examined from individual questionnaires.For example,antenatal as ANC checkup, TT injection,in take of iron tablet, food in take during pregnancy and preparation of delivery postnatal checkup within 2days of delivery, etc. The relationship between maternal health with selected socio-economic and demographic variables are also examined by using frequency distribution and cross tabulation. A total of 939population of 166 household are in the sample of respondent.Among them 46.9 percent are male population and 53.1 percent population is female.The sex ratio is 88.2 (88.2males per 100 females) which is lower than national sex ratio of 99.8 in 2001. (CBS, 2003:61), the male and female dependency ratios are 109.0 and 111.0 respectively. The literacy rate found among themwith primary, secondary is 37.0, 17.8 percent and only 4 percentare S.L.C. above and most of the respondent are involved in agricultural occupation. In the study area, forty one percent of respondent have received antenatal services from different sources about thirty four percent respondent received TT vaccination and 27 percent respondent have taken Iron tablet 89 percent respondent have delivered their child at home and only about 11 percent delivered their baby at hospital.About 27 percent of there spondent has postnatal check up after delivery. The study shows that utilizations of antenatal care services are much higher than postnatal services.