Abstract

Background: Antenatal care (ANC) is the first necessary requisite for a healthy mother and a healthy child. But access to care is poor for women living in slums, particularly newly formed slums. Why women either do not access these services, or access them late, or suffer an avoidable adverse outcome despite timely presentation is related to the concept of quality of care. Respectful maternity care also is an integral aspect of good quality ANC. Objectives: (1) To assess the quality of ANC received by women living in the newly formed urban slums of Aligarh (<10 years duration). (2) To document perception of respectful care as given to target population.
Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional community-based study was done in the newly formed slums of Aligarh city. A total of 347 women who had delivered within the last 1 year were identified for the study. One woman did not give consent and two women were not available during a second visit. Of them, 344 women from 63 slums who had delivered a live baby within the last 1 year formed the study population. The findings were entered on SPSS 17. Result: Of the 344 women forming the study population, 86% were aged between 20 to 35 years, 60% were Muslims, 71.4% belonged to the other backward class (OBC) category, and 10.6% were scheduled caste. A poor quality ANC was received by only 54.9% women. Only 23.3% slum women had three or more ANC visits whereas 19.6% had sin- gle visits. Only 50% women got the required information in a satisfactory manner. Only 18.5% women said they were always treated with dignity and only 28% were respected for privacy. Conclusion: The utilization of ANC services was low and the quality of services offered was poor. The women’s per- ception to attitudes and behavior of health-care workers may be a major barrier for this low utilization of services. Newly formed slums may be more vulnerable among all urban slums.