IJCM₄7A: A hospital based study to assess the utilization of ANC services among married women of reproductive age group in the sub District Hospital, West Delhi, India

Background: Antenatal Services provided by government and its timely utilization are vital for the health outcomes of the mother as well as of child. Objective: To study the current pattern of utilization of antenatal services. To assess the factors influencing utilization of antenatal services. Methodology: A facility based cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted at immunization clinic of sub district hospital from Aug 2022 to Oct 2022 among 230 randomly selected mothers whose child was less than one year. A pre-test self-administrative questionnaire was applied to collect the data and complied. Appropriate statistics was be applied to achieve desired results. Results: Mean age of the participants were 27.88 ±4.6 years. More than half of the participants were identified as Hindu by religion. Most of them were classified under a lower socio-economic status. All participants were literate. Out of the total, 63 (27.4%) were primigravida, and rest were multigravida. While three-fourths of the women registered their pregnancies early, 74.3% attended at least four antenatal care (ANC) visits. Moreover, 87.4% received two doses or one booster dose of Td vaccination, and 83.9% took a minimum of 100 Iron Folic Acid tablets. However, only 66.5% of the participants reported having fully utilized Anti natal care services. Conclusion: Females of young age with primary education and those belonging to the Muslim religion were found to have inadequate utilization of complete antenatal care (ANC), despite the presence of government-funded primary care services.