Delivery Practices and their Determinants in Urban Slums of Amritsar City, Punjab, India

Objective: The study was conducted to explore the delivery practices and various factors influencing these practices in various slum areas of Amritsar city in Punjab.

Methods: It was a cross-sectional study conducted in slums of Amritsar City. By adopting cluster sampling, thirty clusters of seven units each were taken to make a sample of 210 units. The women who had delivered within one year before the interview were taken as study units. They were interviewed with the help of a pretested proforma with a view to study their delivery practices. In order to evaluate the effect of various socio-demographic factors on choice of place of delivery, multivariate regression was applied.

Results: About one third (63.3%) of women delivered at home, 8% were taken to hospital for delivery because of some complication during labour and only 28.7% were planned hospital deliveries. Less than half of the home deliveries (48.5%) were conducted by skilled birth attendant. On multivariate regression analysis socio-economic status, parity and minimum three antenatal checkups during pregnancy emerged as significant determinants affecting the place of delivery.

Conclusion: Overall socioeconomic status of the families needs to be improved and every opportunity of contact of health facility with the mother should be utilized to promote institutional deliveries.