Service delivery of maternal health care in urban India: are the Millennium Development Goals achievable? (WITHDRAWN)

Amrita Gupta, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)

Improvement of maternal health care is an important target of Millennium Development Goals. District Level Household and Facility Survey (DLHS-3) 2007-08, is utilized to examine maternal health care scenario in urban India. India reiterates in achieving eighty percent institutional deliveries and all deliveries attended by trained medical personnel by 2010. The actual performance in urban India presents entirely different picture-with only seventy percent institutional delivery and thirty percent home deliveries with only five percent of them attended by skilled personnel. Fifteen percent women received no antenatal care (ANC), sixty-eight percent received three or more ANC visits and thirty percent received full ANC. Major reasons for not preferring institutional deliveries were poor quality services and high cost. Profit seeking private health sector is mushrooming in cities beyond the reach of poor. What is required is provision of quality services-affordable and accessible to majority population, which constitutes considerable proportion of slum dwellers.