Maternal Complications in Uttar Pradesh, India

Divya Tiwari, Jawaharlal Nehru University

India accounts for about one-quarter of maternal deaths worldwide with the highest number of these deaths occurring in the state of Uttar Pradesh. More than half of the women in U. P. report one or more maternal complications and around 80 percent of maternal deaths is attributable to complications of pregnancy and childbirth, or are caused by any interventions, omissions, incorrect treatment or events that result from these complications. In the present paper data from the RCH-DLHS-2 has been used to examine the prevalence of complications during maternity in Uttar Pradesh and to analyze the impact of demographic factors, socio-economic, health status, health seeking behaviour and regions on maternal complications. The study mainly uses univariate analysis, bivariate analysis (cross tabulation, Chi-square test and correlation) and multivariate logistic regression analysis. There is a significant association between most of the background characteristics and complications. The correlations among the independent variables are not high implying that no serious multi-collinearity exists among the explanatory variables. Multivariate analysis reveals that almost all of these background characteristics have a significant relationship with maternal complications. At the end limitations of the study and data and suggestions based on the findings will be discussed.