Inequitable maternal health care & child immunization in urban India: Special attention on selected cities

In every corner of the world, city dwellers suffer disproportionately from poor health and these inequities leads to differences in their social and living conditions. The objectives of this study are: to compare the child immunization status among urban poor and non poor in the selected eight cities of India and to understand the effect of maternal health and socio economic characteristics in child immunization status by comparing urban poor/non poor and overall comparison of urban with the rural India. Data for analysis is drawn from NFHS –III. The analysis finds that the percentage of women age 20-24 married by age 18 and had home delivery is more than twice in urban poor and in rural as against urban non poor. Percentage of children immunized and births assisted by a health provider is 39.9 and 50.7 percent respectively in urban poor and is higher than rural India. Immunization coverage is much lower for urban poor than for non poor children in all the selected cities except Chennai. Educational status is low in urban poor as compared to urban non poor in both the sex in India. Thus, there is an obvious need to improve educational and health status of city dwellers.