Pregnancy, delivery & family planning : a study of health-seeking behaviour in Meopur village in Rajasthan, India

Abstract

Abstract

The objective of this thesis is to present an interpretive account of how knowledge influences health seeking behaviour related to pregnancy, delivery, postpartum and family planning and how such knowledge affects the utilization of government health-services. This thesis builds on eight months of fieldwork I conducted in India in 2010, from January to July and one-month revisit in December. I lived in Meopur village for five of the eight months of fieldwork. Villagers have a wide spectrum of ideas and practices to ensure fertility, and to protect mothers and their newborn babies against illness and malignant forces. This confirms that Mother- and Child-health” has been and still is a major concern for the villagers in Meopur. During the last decade, Mother and Child health has also increasingly become a focus in the global agenda. United Nations Millennium development goal number 4 is to reduce infant and child mortality rate with two-thirds-, and goal number 5 is to reduce maternal-mortality ratio by three quarter between the years 1990 and 2015. The Indian government has introduced several health initiatives since 2005 whose goals are to reduce the risks of maternal and child mortality in India. This includes engaging local women to motivate new mothers to start breastfeeding right after delivery, to breastfeed exclusively for six month after delivery and to eat nutritious food during post partum. The government hopes to increase the number of women who give birth at hospitals and to make them responsible citizens, and to limit their family sizes through the use of contraceptives. Governmental health workers introduce new knowledge and practices to the villagers, and desires to change what, from their perspective, is perceived as harmful practices performed by backwards and illiterate villagers. Practices which they see as potentially dangerous to mother and child. The villagers see these practices as necessary precautions to prevent severe risks of illness. Different types of Knowledge concerning mother and child health are unequally distributed between healers, doctors, health workers and villagers, between grandmothers and new mothers and, of course, between individuals. How does this affect the villagers health seeking behaviour?