Background: Government of India has been promoting institutional deliveries through a number of programmes running across the country, which provide incentives to mothers after the delivery as well as free transport and drugs to both mothers as well their babies. Personal health seeking practices, socioeconomic and cultural factors also tend to play an important role in utilization of health care services, in addition to other factors like distance, cost, availability and quality of services. As per NFHS 4, 78.8% of pregnant women had four antenatal care visits during their pregnancy in rural areas of Jammu & Kashmir. In Jammu & Kashmir, 85.7% of births were institutional as per NFHS-4 reports. The objective of this study was to determine the factors affecting institutional delivery uptake among women in tribal areas of District Srinagar.

Methodology: A community based cross-sectional study was conducted from March, 2016 to December, 2016. By systematic sampling method, 234 women who had given birth within last two years were selected and data was collected using structured interview method. Chi-square test was used for testing independence between categorical variables.

Results: In our study, 128 (54.7%) of the study participants were below 30 years of age. Out of 234 respondents, majority 223 (95.3%) had at least four antenatal visits during their pregnancy. Majority (72.6%) of the women gave birth at home. Age, educational status, occupation, parity and number of antenatal visits were significantly related to the place of delivery.

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Dr Mohsina Mukhtar

Department of Community Medicine, Government Medical College, Srinagar, India