Maternal Health Care in South India: Do Adolescents Seek More Care than Older Women?

Asha Kilaru, Belaku Trust
Martyn Brookes, University of Southampton
Saraswathy Ganapathy, Belaku Trust
Zoe Matthews, University of Southampton

The 1992-93 NFHS for Karnataka revealed that a higher percentage of women aged 20-34 and primigravidas received antenatal care from a skilled provider compared with other groups. To determine the extent of care-seeking by pregnant adolescents, we analyze data from an in-depth, prospective study of maternal morbidity and care in rural Karnataka (n=500). Significant differences in health care seeking emerge in both bivariate analysis and logistic regression considering characteristics such as education, SES, morbidity and parity. Younger mothers seem to have significant advantage in terms of timing and number of contacts with health services, and report more contacts with private services rather than government providers. Considering the expected lower autonomy that younger women experience, these results are surprising. Cultural and other factors that might mitigate this presumed disadvantage in this south Indian setting will be explored in further analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data.