| Author | Rai, Renuka |
| Call Number | AIT Thesis no.GD-13-09 |
| Subject(s) | Maternal health services--Nepal
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| Note | A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science inGender and Development Studies, School of Environment, Resources and Development |
| Publisher | Asian Institute of Technology |
| Series Statement | Thesis ; no.GD-13-09 |
| Abstract | As declared by Nepal’s Interim Constitution 2006, every Nepali citizen has a fundamental right to access and use government-facilitated essential health care services.Maternal health care services are also included in it. With an aim of reducing infant and maternal mortality, the Government of Nepal has introduced Free Delivery Policy and Maternity Incentive Scheme in 2009 and since then Nepali women are receiving free maternity-related health care services.This study, in this contextaims to assess the gender equality and social inclusion in such government-facilitated maternal healthcare services. The study identifies who are excluded from the current situation of maternal healthcare services and analyzes the reasons why they get excluded, particularly focusing on the gender relations and practices in the household. The study has been undertaken the cases of two VDCs of Dolakha district Bonch and Laduk, where the state’s programs on maternal health care are implemented at its best for the past three decades. For this, the standardized questionnaire surveywasconducted with one hundred twenty women respondents who had a birth within past three years. Additionally, individual interviews were conducted with thirty-seven sampled women respondents who also had had a birth within past three years. Besides, two mother’s groups including female community health volunteers were participated in focus group discussions, and health service providers were interviewed as key informant.The findings of this study shows that Nepal’s free health policy and maternity incentive scheme is instrumental to secure equitable access to maternity-related health care across socioeconomic groups, but along it is not sufficient to ensure that all women use such care and equally benefit from it. These schemes are yet not adequate and sufficient in overcoming barriers to women’s access as women are not a homogeneous category, and hence their maternal health experience is greatly affected by their multiple positions; by many other socioeconomic and demographic factors and barriers. Despite of entire positive endeavors in the government-facilitated maternal health program, the study found that still the one fourth of women in the study area currently not attending four antenatal clinic checkups and nearly half of the women populations are still giving births in a non-institutional setting, i.e. at home.Geographical inaccessibility, high illiteracy among women, late-age pregnancy and childbearing, lack of proper health information and lack of knowledge on family planning, lack of access to mass-media, earlymarriage, unequal gender division of labor and women’s heavy workloads and greater household responsibility, all contribute to women’s low tendencies to utilize maternal health care services less frequently despite the fact that such health care services are free of cost with additional scheme of financial incentive. The overall situation of maternal health care service utilization is even worse in the case of those women, who live in a 1+ hours distance to a local health facility, those who are illiterateand cannot read and write their own names, those women particularly the age of 35+, and those with 4+ births. The general assumption of health inequality among caste and ethnicity and economic groupsin the use of maternal healthcare services is challenged by this study. In other words, the finding of this study did not establish any statistical significance between the castes and ethnicity and their use of maternal health care services. |
| Year | 2013 |
| Corresponding Series Added Entry | Asian Institute of Technology. Thesis ; no.GD-13-09 |
| Type | Thesis |
| School | School of Environment, Resources, and Development (SERD) |
| Department | Department of Development and Sustainability (DDS) |
| Academic Program/FoS | Gender and Development Studies (GD) |
| Chairperson(s) | Kusakabe, Kyoko; |
| Examination Committee(s) | Doneys, Philippe;Pongquan, Soparth; |
| Scholarship Donor(s) | Government of Japan; |
| Degree | Thesis (M. Sc.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2013 |