Community access to the utilization of maternal care services in rural Rajasthan, India

Kanwaljeet Virdi, Jawaharlal Nehru University

The status of health in the state of Rajasthan, despite considerable progress is quite poor and the health scenario in the state is still characterized by gender imbalance, low vital rates and an uneven health care coverage. The utilization of health services especially maternal care services has also remained poor in the rural areas of Rajasthan. The reasons may be illiteracy and ignorance, low levels of income and a host of other traditional factors. Utilization of maternal care services is also affected by a host of factors such as, distance, cost and socio-economic characteristics. Women often do not avail the medical services which are available to them to safeguard their health and well-being. This paper, thus, is an attempt to understand the factors that determine the women’s utilization of maternal care services in terms of various individual, household and community characteristics in rural Rajasthan. Maternal care services have been examined in terms of antenatal care and safe delivery using the data from the National Family Health Survey 2 (NFHS-2). The study uses binomial logistic regression and multinomial logistic regression to analyze the importance of the factors that affect the utilization of maternal care services. The findings reveal that mother’s education and media exposure are crucial determinants in the utilization of maternal care services.