Study On Maternal Health Care Service And Influential Factors In Rural Shanxi

Objective This study aims to describe the current situation of maternal health care service,identify the main problems of maternal health services in rural area of ShanXi province, analyzethe main factors influencing the using of maternal health care and study the effective measures toimprove the accessibility of maternal health care in rural area.Methods Altogether 20 villages from 5 project counties were selected on basis of randomcluster sampling, and the women in these villages age from 20～45 years old who have deliveredfrom March 1, 2009 to March 1, 2009 were carried out. According to their own wills, allparticipants completed face to face self-adapted questionnaires by centralization and household.The content of the questionnaires included social demography characteristics, history of disease,abnormal gestation (spontaneous abortion, stillbirth, abnormal fetus, mental retardation children),maternal health care knowledge, perceived needs for maternal health, utilization of maternalhealth.Results (1) Maternal health care knowledge, the approach of knowledge and the impactfactors: Result showed that the awareness rate about health care knowledge was over 70%. 772(38.8%) investigations know all the questions, 95.7% of the subjects knew about“whethercontact rays would damages unborn children”, with the awareness rate being highest. 75.9% ofthe subjects knew about“whether put on weight during pregnancy the more the better”, with theawareness rate being lowest. 75.9% of the subjects could gain health knowledge from medicalworkers, only 31.6% of the subjects gain health knowledge from the internet. Logistic regressionanalysis indicated that the level of the health knowledge were different between differenteducational levels（p＜0.05）.(2) Perceived needs and utilization of maternal health: There are strong demands ofmaternal health in rural ShanXi. All the maternal health the investigations need were more than80%; 91.4% of subjects had prenatal exams, of which 25.3% had more than 5 times prenatalexams. The rate of prenatal examination in the first three months of pregnancy, the percentage ofhospitalized delivery and the rate of postpartum visit were 71.0%, 88.5%, 20.3% respectively(3) The factors influencing the utilization of maternal health: Logistic regression analysisshowed that the ages, abnormal gestation and the distance were significantly associated with themore than 5 times prenatal exam; Main factors influencing hospitalized delivery were ages, educational level, the number of children, family income and the distance; Main factorsinfluencing prenatal examination in the first three months of pregnancy were educational level,abnormal gestation and level of the health knowledge.Conclusions The awareness rate on health knowledge among women in rural Shanxi is high,while the utility low and most of them have strong desire for more eugenic health service. Mainfactors influencing utilization of maternal health were the poor economic status, low educationlevel and the far distance from the medical healthcare organization. It is necessary to establisheffective health education program and materials. The government should develop newapproaches to maternal care which take into consideration local conditions in order to insure theusing of maternal care for people with low income.