Beyond Maternal Mortality: Maternal Health Care Seeking Behavior for Post-Partum Morbidity for Urban Mothers

Abstract

Maternal morbidities, in most cases are preventable and treatable. Since the entire human rights agenda has human dignity as its core value, women with short or long lasting maternal morbidity suffer loss of human dignity in their society. Thus, to improve maternal health, in addition to targeted reduction of maternal morality ratio, maternal morbidities in developing countries must also be reduced substantially. Against this backdrop, this paper justifies the need of studying the health care seeking behaviour of women suffering from post-partum maternal morbidity in the urban context of Bangladesh with a particular attention. In urban Bangladesh, aided by the proliferation of privately owned corporate modern maternal health care facilities, the richer section of the society is increasingly leaning towards the medicalized process of childbirth, whereas the mothers from the poorer section of the society are still staying away from such facilities, even for life saving obstetric care. In order to develop policies, strategies and programs aimed at improving the maternal health of Bangladeshi women, it is very important to understand the underlying causes of why women do not get treated for their maternal health complications, and if they do get treated, what motivates them to do so. This question is especially relevant in the context of urban areas where maternal health facilities are fairly easily accessible in terms of distance and transportation, yet many women do not avail of these facilities.