Pregnancy care consists of prenatal (before birth) and postpartum (after birth) healthcare for expectant mothers. Antenatal / prenatal care can be defined as the care provided by trained health-care professionals to pregnant women and adolescent girls in order to make sure the best health conditions for both mother and baby throughout the pregnancy. The components of ANC include: risk identification, prevention and management of pregnancy-related or concurrent diseases, and health education and health promotion. 1 According to Indian government guidelines, every pregnant should make use of 3 or more antenatal care visits along with 90 or more IFA tablets and 2 or more TT injections. According to joint WHO and MOD meeting report, birth defects account for 7% of all neonatal mortality and 3.3 million under five deaths. The prevalence of birth defects in India is 6-7% which translates to around 1.7 million birth defects annually.
Objectives: The main objective of the study was to find out the knowledge level of the subjects on pregnancy care, to educate the community subjects on pregnancy care and to Evaluate Pregnancy Information leaflet on pregnancy care
Methodology: A questionnaire-based interview was executed on 100 study subjects in Mangalore region. Study duration was 6 months. Ethical approval was obtained from Ethics Committee of Srinivas Institute of Medical Science and Research Center. The study population included in the study were adults above 18 years of age, who can understand English/Malayalam and belonging to the family with one or more pregnancy either in past, present or to be in future. Data was analyzed with the help of excel 17 and SPSS 20.
Result and Discussion: In our study, survey was carried out on 100 subjects of Mangalore region All the study subjects were female. Out of 100 subjects 58 participants were in between 31 years to 50 Years of age while 19 participants were in 18-30 Years age group. The subjects in the present study do not have adequate knowledge regarding antenatal care, folic acid supplementation, TT injection and dietary change, irrespective to their educational level. The study found that 75% of the subjects were not aware of the antenatal care and about 100% were unknown regarding the necessity of antenatal check- up. ANC visit should be an essential part of the antenatal care but our study found that about 13% of the study subjects were not going for check- up. On pharmacist intervention and proper counselling, in our follow up interview we found that unawareness has reduced to 17%, while 84% realized the need for check-up.
Conclusion: In our study we found that the respondents do not have adequate knowledge regarding antenatal care, folic acid supplementation, TT injection and dietary change. The age, literacy of the mother significantly influences antenatal care and ANC service utilization. To improve effective utilization of ANC services we need to raise awareness through counselling, improve the quality of ANC service, along with effective monitoring and evaluation. Pharmacist plays a major role in increasing awareness among mothers in pregnancy and further emphasizing the importance of ANC.
Keywords: Antenatal care, Knowledge, Awareness.
Folic Acid Supplementation and Prevention of Birth Defects