TRENDS AND DETERMINANTS OF UTILIZATION OF MATERNAL HEALTH CARE SERVICES

Large numbers of women worldwide are dying due to factors related to pregnancy and child birth. Experiences from both developed and developing countries have shown that these deaths could have been prevented if women had access to basic maternity care services. In Ethiopia too, utilization of maternity care services are low. This book, using data from the 2000 and 2005 EDHS attempts to identify the factors that affect utilization of maternal health care services in Amhara regional state. The results show that there was a statistically significant increase in ANC use, up take of TTI and PNC use in the five years period. Use of delivery care also increased, though, it was not statistically significant. The results of the logistics regression revealed that maternal education was the most important predictor of utilization of all services. Improving educational opportunity for women is likely to have strong influence on the utilization of MHC services. More over, integrating MHC and family planning services is also believed to attract women to use MHC service.