Mother and child health care services in Kerman tribal families

Background: One of the important goals of world health organization is to improve mother and child health care services and various attempts are needed to achieve this goal. Objective: This study was performed to determine the quality of mother and child health care services in Kerman tribal families. Methods: This cross-sectional study was carried out in 2001 on 950 tribal families in Kerman province. A number of rural districts were selected from each township based on its total population and the selected tribal families were questioned by trained researchers. Data were analyzed statistically. Findings: From all mothers 19.4% were literate. The age of marriage and consequently the age of first pregnancy was between 10-41 years. In the studied group 37.4% of mothers were under the care for safe contraceptive methods and 44.5% of mothers had 2-6 dozes of vaccination and consequently immunization for at least three years or forever. In regard to prenatal care 28.9% of mothers had prenatal care during their last pregnancy and 9.2% had done routine laboratory tests during pregnancy. In 25.6% of mothers the last delivery had been done by a trained person . Also 5.6% had post partum care during the first 10 days after delivery and 7.3% during the days 10th –40th after delivery. In regard to the vaccination of children under 6 years, the third doze of DTP, polio and hepatitis had been done in 95.9%, 95.9% and 77.1% respectively and the first doze of measles and BCG had been injected in 99.1% and 95.6% of children respectively. Among children 69.7% had growth card and in only 1.4% growth curve had been drawn regularly. In regard to breast feeding 99.1% of children had breast feeding and 20.4% of children had received multivitamin or vitamin A+ D and 13.8% had received oral Iron. Conclusion: Considering the obtained results, children vaccination and breast feeding have been highly satisfactory in the studied group but in other cases there is a great difference between the rate of preformed cares and the expected rate.