Correlation between antenatal care and institutional delivery in assam

Antenatal care and institutional delivery are the important determinants of maternal health care that can help reduce with maternal and child mortality. Accordingly different programs have been implemented in regard to avail this health care among the women. Institutional delivery reduces the risk of both mother and infant mortality whereas antenatal care has an important role in promoting institutional delivery. It is recommended as per the World Health Organization (WHO) that use of antenatal care by adequate number of visits can have positive effect on other maternal health care services with institutional delivery. But, India’s maternal and child health programs have not promoted institutional delivery aggressively except in the cases of high risk. Moreover, use of antenatal care is not adequately achieved among all the women. So, this study examines the pattern of antenatal care by number of visits and institutional delivery that a woman receives among the districts within the state and also correlation among these two determinants. Karl Pearson’s rank correlation coefficient model was applied to measure the independent effect of number of antenatal care visits on the institutional delivery. The analysis is based on data from Assam’s fourth National Family Health Survey (NFHS -4), Government of India. The results indicate that use of both the determinants with adequate number of ‘four or more antenatal care visits’ and institutional delivery were varying largely among the districts in the state. Also positive correlation was observed between uses of these two services when analyzed among the districts. The study is limited by not undertaking the factors that become constraint in utilizing these services among the women and that result in variation among the districts. Further studies on the factors impacting on its use can help identify the reasons of less utilization among the women in the region so that it can enrich all the women by making it more accessible to them by setting different targets and programs.