The study was conducted to explore the delivery practices and various factors influencing these practices in various slum areas of Amritsar city in Punjab.
It was a cross-sectional study conducted in slums of Amritsar City. By adopting cluster sampling, thirty clusters of seven units each were taken to make a sample of 210 units. The women who had delivered within one year before the interview were taken as study units. They were interviewed with the help of a pretested proforma with a view to study their delivery practices. In order to evaluate the effect of various socio-demographic factors on choice of place of delivery, multivariate regression was applied.
About one third (63.3%) of women delivered at home, 8% were taken to hospital for delivery because of some complication during labour and only 28.7% were planned hospital deliveries. Less than half of the home deliveries (48.5%) were conducted by skilled birth attendant. On multivariate regression analysis socio-economic status, parity and minimum three antenatal checkups during pregnancy emerged as significant determinants affecting the place of delivery.
Overall socioeconomic status of the families needs to be improved and every opportunity of contact of health facility with the mother should be utilized to promote institutional deliveries.
Delivery Practices, Determinants, Slums
