Birth Preparedness and Complication Readiness in Uttar Pradesh, India

The objective of this study is to investigate the subject of birth preparedness and complication readiness to tackle the obstetric complications. Birth preparedness and complication readiness is studied based on husband’s response. Emergency birth preparedness has been promoted to address delays in seeking skilled care at birth. However, little evidence is available for birth preparedness and its key covariates. Therefore, to examine the level of birth preparedness, this study has used primary data collected from the selected district of Uttar Pradesh. The information in this study may be valuable to Indian health policy makers and programme implementers who wish to lower the prevailing high maternal mortality in the country. This paper is based on the primary data collected from 33 husbands of deceased women and 150 husbands of surviving mothers from one selected district of the state of Uttar Pradesh, India. Birth preparedness and complication readiness is measured using series of questions. The husbands were asked whether they followed the following key desired steps while their wife was pregnant with last child: 1) thinking about the measures to be taken in case of life danger; 2) being aware about the delivery date of wife; 3) saving money for meeting delivery expenses; 4) discussing plans with close family members; 5) keeping ready clean cotton and other necessities; 6) identifying a hospital to go in case of emergency; 7) arranging transportation and 8) arranging dai/doctor. Taking at least five steps were considered being well-prepared. Frequency distribution and cross tabulation analysis were done and logistic regression model was applied to understand independent effect of key covariates. Proportion test and t-test were also applied to check the statistical significance in two groups. It was found that different steps of birth preparedness were not planned in case of all pregnancies. Many respondents did not take any step about birth preparedness or they prepared only for few steps only. Findings from logistic regression suggest that controlling the effect of other covariates, if wife registered her name with any hospital or doctor for antenatal care (ANC), the level of preparedness was significantly higher compared to those who were not registered for ANC services. Similarly, the husbands who reported that men should get involved in deciding the place of delivery were significantly positively associated with well birth preparedness.