Published Paper Details:

The main objective of the paper has been to explore health care utilization during pregnancy among a group of Birhor women. A cross sectional study was conducted among 44 Birhor women, who were aged between 15 and 44 years, living in Purulia district of West Bengal. Information on socio-demographic characteristics and utilization of health care services during the period of pregnancy were collected using standard pretested questionnaire. It was observed that 68.2 % of the participants received antenatal care services and all of them received tetanus toxoid (TT) injection and iron tablets, in case of iron tablet, very few of them (22.7%) completed the course of this drug. During antenatal care, about 70.5 % of the participants received supplementary nutrition from Anganwadi Centre. Bivariate analysis (chi square test) did not found any significant association between utilization of antenatal care services and socio-demographic factors. The qualitative data of the present study shows that study participants have alleged that the health care providers are not providing adequate care to them. Finally, study concludes that though a good number of Birhor women had utilized the maternal health care services during their pregnancy, still few of them were unaware about the importance of such services.