Relevance of Health Knowledge in Reporting Maternal Health Complications and Utilization of Maternal Health Care in India

Background: Though, education has positive impact on health but education alone will not help in recognizing, reporting health problems and utilization of health care. Similarly, in case of maternal health, women need proper health knowledge to recognize health problems and opting for health care; otherwise misconception may lead to adverse health outcomes. The study assesses the level of health knowledge of women and its systematic association with the reporting of maternal health problems and health care utilization by Indian women.
Methods: Indian Human Development Survey (IHDS-2005) data is used. Simple bivariate and multivariate analyses: binary logistic regression, multinomial regression, principal component analysis and significance test are used.
Results: Though socio-economic factors ar important predictors of reporting of maternal health problems and utilization of maternal health care, the study found a huge variation in reporting of maternal health problems and health care utilization within same socio-economic groups by level of health knowledge. Increasing level of health knowledge is positively associated with reporting of greater pregnancy and post-natal complications and greater level of ante-natal, institutional delivery and post-natal care seeking by women.