Publication:

Knowledge and practices regarding antenatal care among mothers of infants in an urban area of Amritsar, Punjab

Background Worldwide, approximately 830 women died every single day due to complications during pregnancy or childbirth in 2015. Most maternal deaths are preventable as the necessary medical interventions are well known. So the present study was conducted to find the knowledge and practices regarding antenatal care among the mothers of infants.

Methods The mothers having less than one year child according to the annual report of year 2017 were included in the study. A pre-designed questionnaire, which was pre tested was used to collect the information. Out of 332 mothers 327 were willing to participate in the study. House to house survey was done to collect the information. Statistical analysis was done by using SPSS 20.0.

Results Regarding the knowledge about the antenatal care 22.0% mothers had poor knowledge while 45.6% and 32.4% had average and good knowledge respectively. Age and education status of the mother had significant relation with the knowledge regarding ANC (p=0.00). 96% of mothers started ANC in first trimester. 79.5% of mothers had regular ANC visits during pregnancy. Regarding post natal visits 86.5% of the mothers visited for the same.

Conclusions Considerable gaps were found in the knowledge and practices regarding ANC. Health care workers play an important role in motivating the woman and her family to utilize the ANC services. The health workers should be trained adequately about the available ANC services. Community IEC activities should be increased to create awareness about the ANC services which are available free of cost in our country.