Antenatal Care in Mursan, India : A clinical study and litterature review of current recommendations

Abstract

Although India is a prosperous country in many ways the health system is still facing great challenges. When it comes to antenatal care India can be compared to other developing countries. In 2002 the WHO developed new guidelines for antenatal care, which are evidence based, and can be applied with minimal resources. Our objective in this study was to investigate whether or not attending antenatal controls correlated with complications during labour in Mursan. We also researched current recommendations for antenatal care in the world, and saw whether this was being followed in Mursan. We review some of the literature on the subject to see what can be done to increase the coverage of good antenatal care in the developing world. We used data from 108 deliveries registered in the Mursan clinic in 2010, and used SPSS for analysis. In addition to this, we used unsystematic searches in PubMed, and the WHO and UN web pages, to find relevant background information on the topic.

We found that more than half of the women who delivered at the clinic had not attended any antenatal check-ups at the same clinic. Among the women who had been to few antenatal visits there was a 1,68 times greater risk of complications compared to those who attended the recommended number of four or more. This reflects the importance of attending antenatal care, and suggests there is still a lot to be done to increase antenatal care coverage in rural India.