Assessment of Utilization of Antenatal Care Services Among Pregnant Women Visiting Tertiary Care Hospital in Chennai, Tamil Nadu

Abstract

Introduction: Antenatal care (ANC) is the care provided by skilled health –care professionals to pregnant women to ensure the best health conditions for both mother and baby during pregnancy. Through detection and treatment of pregnancy-related complications, and through the identification of women and girls at increased risk of complication during labour and delivery, it prevents maternal mortality and morbidity. Methods and Material: It was a hospital based cross-sectional study conducted over a period of four months from July 2021 to October 2021 among 200 antenatal women who were admitted for delivery in a tertiary care hospital. Universal sampling technique were adopted to select the participants. Data were collected using pre-designed semi-validated questionnaire and analysed using SPSS (ver_18.0) software. Results: The overall complete antenatal care utilization was 42%, with nearly 50% of women consuming 100 or more Iron and folic acid tablets and 100% utilization of immunization against tetanus. Factors like maternal age, type of family, level of education, spouse education, parity and socio-economic status of the family were found to be statistically associated with complete antenatal care utilization. Conclusions: Antenatal care utilization was low which shows the need for the scaling up of ANC services even during Covid-19 period.