Health Care Seeking Behavior during Delivery Time among the Women of Slums in Dhaka

This thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters in population, Reproductive Health, Gender and Development of East West University, Dhaka, Bangladesh.The present thesis explores the health care seeking behavior during the time of delivery among the women of slums in Dhaka. The study was· based on a mixed method. One hundred and thirty six respondents were selected for conducting this quantitative survey. Eighteen participants were included in the study for in-depth -interview, and two group discussions has been conducted to understand their health care seeking behavior during delivery period. Result suggests that 50% of adolescent women (aged less than 19 years) and 57% young adult women (20-29 years) and 38% of elderly women aged 30 years and above delivered their babies at delivery centers. It is found that, 59% of mothers who were engaged in any paid work compared to 49% mothers who were engaged in household work delivered their babies at some health facility. The mothers belonging to extended families were significantly (co-efficient -3 .509) less likely to seek institutional delivery compared to mothers who were from nuclear families. Qualitative study also shows, mothers from nuclear family more likely preferred delivery centers for delivery, where mother from extended family were dependent upon mother-in-Laws' decision, and in most of the cases mother-in-1aws did not allow them to go to delivery centers for delivery. Mothers, experienced with pregnancy related complication earlier were more likely to prefer delivery centers compared to the mothers who were not experienced with any kind of pregnancy related · complications. However, study found that negligible numbers of participants were not aware about the services of delivery centers but a significant proportion of mothers from slums sought their pregnancy related service from delivery centers