Safe Motherhood Practices among Muslim Women in Taple VDC of Gorkha District

Abstract

Background: The socio-economic factors such as religion, cultural beliefs, education, occupation and economic status etc affect the practices of safe motherhood. Therefore, safe motherhood programme need to be reached to the women who have an unmet need of critical maternal services so that the Government of Nepal could achieve Millennium Development Goal of 3/4th reduction of maternal mortality ratio. Therefore, this research attempted to explore Safe-Motherhood practices among Muslim women in Taple VDC of Gorkha district. Methods: Census of all the Muslim women between the age of 15-49 residing in ward no 1, 2, 4, 5, 6 and 8 was done. Among those total married women who have at least a child below 5 years old was selected and interviewed to collect the primary data. A structured questionnaire was developed for collecting the data. Interview Guideline and Focus Group Discussion Guidelines were also developed to collect qualitative data. The quantitative data was entered in Ms-Excel and further analysis and statistical tests were done by using SPSS program. The qualitative data were analyzed manually. Results: Out of the total respondents (123), most of the respondents were unfamiliar about safe motherhood. The percentage of first ANC visit was also very low (8%) as compared to DoHS 2006/2007 which is 73.1% of national level. But the contraceptive prevalence rate is nearly 50% which is quite good. The study has found that most of the deliveries took place in household and health institutional deliveries are very low. The qualitative data shows that education level, economic status and religion of the Muslim people affect safe motherhood practices. Conclusions: Safe motherhood program aimed at improving maternal and child health care and its accessibility and maximum utilization of this service by the women. For this governmental and non-government, national and international level safe motherhood plan has to be revised. Keywords: Gorkha district; Muslim women; safe motherhood practices.