Publications

Abstract:

Antenatal care (ANC) is a comprehensive care for pregnant women to enable them to attain and maintain a state of good health throughout pregnancy. This will improve the chance of having safe delivery of healthy infant to a healthy mother at term.1.To estimate the proportion of women who have registered early for antenatal care (< 12 weeks)2.To identify the determinants of early registration of pregnancy in a maternity care hospital in rural south India. This is a cross sectional study among pregnant women attending antenatal clinic at rural maternity hospital in Ramanagara District, from December 2014 to January 2015. Informed consent was taken and 308 antenatal women were included. The mean age of the study population was23 ± 3 years. Out of the 308 antenatal women 175 (56.8%) were primi gravida and 133 (43.2%) were multi gravida. 285 (92.5%) women registered early, of which 245 (95%) were aware of the importance of early registration. As expected, we found a significant association between awareness of early registration and early registration practice among the antenatal women (p=0.001). The proportion of women who have registered early for antenatal care (<12 weeks) was 92.5%, which was much higher than the NFHS-3 (43%). Awareness regarding the importance of early registration of pregnancy was found to be vital in ensuring the actual practice of early registration.