Poverty key factor in determining institutional delivery: study

What is the news?

According to a study, poverty, education, and exposure to a community health worker are more important than age at marriage in determining whether a mother will be able to have a safe birth in a medical facility.

About the Study

The study was conducted to understand the socio-demographic factors as well as barriers in low coverage of institutional deliveries.

It focussed on nine low-performing States (LPS) with high burden of maternal mortality — Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

These States constitute about half of the country’s population and contribute 62% of maternal deaths, 71% of infant deaths, 72% of under-five (years) deaths and 61% of births in the country. They also account for 12% of global maternal deaths.

What are the key findings of the study?

Factors Responsible in Determining whether a women will seek Institutional Delivery

–  Poverty (1.4 to 3.5) is twice more important than age at marriage.

–  Education (1.2 to 3.8) is 1.5 times more important than age at marriage. 

–  Interaction with a community health worker (1.63) and awareness campaigns (1.1 to 1.3) had a greater impact than age at marriage. 

–  However, distance to the health facility (.79) and age at marriage had almost similar influences on institutional deliveries.

What are the barriers in assessing Institutional Deliveries? 

Distance or lack of transportation, Higher costs, facility closures and poor service or trust issues.

What are the recommendations given by the study? 

Increase the number of public health facilities, improve associated quality of care as inadequate clinical training and insufficient skilled human resources affects the quality of available maternity services resulting in low coverage of institutional deliveries.

What is the significance of this study?

This study comes at a time when the government has proposed to raise the age of marriage for women to 21 in order to reduce maternal deaths.

This decision has come under heavy criticism for ignoring social realities such as poverty, education and access to health services that are said to play a bigger role in preventing child marriages.

Source: This post is based on the article ‘Poverty key factor in determining institutional delivery: study’ published in The Hindu on 26^th Dec 2021.