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Journal of Social Welfare and Management

Volume  12, Issue 2, May–August 2020, Pages 57-64
 

Original Article

Bathing and Weighing of Neonants of Recently Delivered Women in Home Based Newborn Care in Uttar Pradesh, India

Tridibesh Tripathy, Shankar Das, Anjali Tripathy,

1 Public Health and Homoeopathic Expert, Subject Expert Master of Public Health (Community Medicine) Course, Lucknow University, Lucknow, 2 Director, International Institute of Health Management Research, Dwarka, New Delhi, India, 3 Program Co-ordinator, Water Aid India, UP office, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh.

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.21088/jswm.0975.0231.12220.2

Abstract

When ASHAs were introduced in NRHM in 2005, their primary aim was to visit homes of newborns as the first program in UP operated through the ASHAs was the Comprehensive Child Survival Program in 2008. Since then, tracking of all deliveries and all the newborns are an integral part of the work of ASHAs in all the primary health care programs operated by the NHM in UP (GOI, 2005, GOUP, 2013). The current article examines the role and work of ASHAs through the responses of the mothers of newborns at district level. Evaluation studies on the performance of ASHAs was done since 2011 as by then ASHAs had actually worked in the field for a minimum period of 5 years. It is to be noted that National Rural Health Mission was rolled out in April 2005 but it took about one to two years for the states to hire ASHAs and put things in place right from the state to the village level (GOUP, 2013). In this article, a comprehensive feedback is elicited from the Recently Delivered Women on bathe and weight of their newborn as part of newborn care program at the district level. The current study explores some of the crucial variables on the home-based newborn care activities like bathing and weighing of the newborn response of mothers of newborns on newborn care. Bathing and weighing of newborn in child health programs is a critical component and the current article follows up the role of ASHAs in Home Based Newborn Care program through the response of the mothers. The mothers were selected as respondents as they were the selected mothers from the list of mothers available with their ASHAs at the time of survey. The relevance of the study assumes significance as data on the details of the bathing of newborn in days and weighing component of child health and newborn are not included in many surveys. Further, response details from the mothers on these two components are usually not collected in many studies/surveys. Such responses that collect actual actions on the bathing and weighing thereby indirectly assessing the work and approach of ASHAs including their awareness on the programs related to weighing and bathing are not the focus in very large-scale health surveys. Such response on these two activities of newborn care through the work of ASHAs in the current implemented programs do not come under the ambit of many social studies or surveys. The surveys gain more teeth when the response is solicited from the horse’s mouth like the current article. A total of four districts of Uttar Pradesh were selected purposively for the study and the data collection was conducted among the mothers in the respective districts. A pre-tested structured and in-depth interview schedule was used with close-ended questions. These in-depth interview schedule collected descriptive details as responded by mothers. The quantitative data were conducted amongst the mothers and a total of 500 respondents participated in the study. The results reflected that regarding bathing of the newborn for the first time after birth. as per the response of the RDWs across the 4 districts, majority of them had bathed their baby on the 3rd day after birth. On the activity of weighing their newborns, most of the RDWs in the 4 districts replied that their newborn was weighed. As per the mother child card, most of the newborns across the four districts had 3 kilograms as their recorded weight in the card. Regarding recall of weight of the newborns by their mothers, it was evident that the ASHAs in Saharanpur discussed the weight of the newborn with the RDWs but in the other three districts it was not discussed and hence none of the RDWs were able to recall the weight of their newborn.

 


Keywords : ASHA; Thermal care; HBNC; Weighing; Vernix Caseosa.
Corresponding Author : Tridibesh Tripathy