DOI: 10.36347/sjams.2017.v05i08.041

Pages: 3179-3184

Antenatal care services are critically important component for reducing morbidity and mortality among the mothers. In developing country like India antenatal care is not uniformly distributed particularly in rural areas. Various socio-demographic factor influences the utilization of antenatal care. The aim of this study is to assess the utilization of antenatal care services in rural areas of Jorhat and to find out the influence of various factors on the utilization of antenatal care services. It is a community based cross sectional study among women who have recently delivered and having children less than one year of age. Using multistage random sampling a total of 290 eligible subjects was selected for our study and they were interviewed using a pre-tested pre-designed schedule. In the present study about the utilization of antenatal care service in rural areas of Jorhat shows 100% of the study subjects registered during antenatal period but only 28.6% study subjects had early registration and 74.1% subjects had 4 or more antenatal visits, 82.8% women consumed more than 100 iron folic acid tablets and 93.1% women received 2 doses of tetanus toxoid. Age, socioeconomic class and education were significant contributing factors (P value<0.05) for antenatal care utilization. Antenatal care allows for the management of pregnancy, detection and treatment of complications and promotion of good health. The utilization of antenatal care services among the rural dwellers was found to be satisfactory though few of them were lacking behind due to ignorance and illiteracy.