Abstract
Introduction:
Research was carried on 100, 14-49 year old mothers who had a child whose age was 0-3 years old and lived in the district of swat (Saidu Teaching Hospital Saidu Sharif Swat to determine use of maternal and child health care (MCH) services, their perception of needing these services, and the relationship between MCH utilization and social, economic, and demographic factors.
Materials and Methods:
A cross sectional study of 100 mothers was conducted in different union council of swat during the autumn 2012, a house to house survey in the villages was carried out and some half of the respondents was selected from the Saidu Teaching hospital that cover the health of the whole population of Swat District.
Results:
In the study sample 68% of women had 1-3 children. Only 57% had registered with a health facility, mainly primary health centres (17%), during their 1st trimester 22% women didn’t visit a doctor, but only visit the health facility for delivery. The major reason for not visiting the facility was socio-cultural, financial and demographic problems. 84% of women gave birth to a child at home. A traditional birth attendant (dai), or Lady Health Visitor (LHV) were present for all home births.
Conclusion:
The result of a this study has shown that age, duration of marriage, education, occupation, family income, parity and distance are significantly correlated with the choice of MCH services used. The result of this discriminant analysis highlights distance, mother's education and age as the strongest determinants of the choice of MCH services, after adjusting for all other variables. Women of higher socioeconomic group, 15-29 years old, and with 03 children were more likely to adequately use prenatal care. These results highlighted the need to develop a strong health education program using the mass media, recruiting more female health guides than male and training dais in MCH services.
