Newborn care practices in urban slums: Evidence from central India

Abstract

One-third of India's urban population resides in slums and squatters, in extreme poverty conditions. Newborn care is sub-optimal among India's urban poor, yet scarcely documented. We assessed newborn care practices in 11 urban slums of Indore in Central India. Practices such as clean cord care, thermal care, timely initiation of breastfeeding and exclusive breastfeeding upto neonatal period were enquired from 312 mothers of infants aged 2-4 months. Correlates of these practices were identified using multiple logistic regression. 72.1% births were home births (slum-home: 56.4%, native-village home: 15.7%). Slumbased traditional birth attendants (sTBAs) conducted 77.3% slum-home births. Skilled assistance during slum-home births was low (7.4%). Clean cord care (22.2%) and thermal care (10.2%) practices were also low. Trained or skilled assistance during slum-home births was positively associated with clean cord care ) and thermal care (OR 2.0 CI: 1.1-4.1). Timely initiation of breastfeeding was sub-optimal (50.6%) even in facility births. Exclusive breastfeeding upto neonatal period was higher for mothers counselled on exclusive breastfeeding by a health volunteer during neonatal period (OR 2.3,. Following emerge imperative for improving newborn care in urban slums-i) antenatal and postnatal counselling by trained health volunteers, ii) enhancing competence of sTBAs and linking them to affordable facilities and iii) sensitizing and training public health facility staff.

Breastfeeding Attachment and Positioning Technique, Practices, and Knowledge of Related Issues Among Mothers in a Resettlement Colony of Delhi

“…12,13 However, such information is still not available for urban resettlement and slum areas, which would be beneficial for designing "need-felt" intervention programs to bring about positive behavioral changes among mothers for infant health. 14 Therefore, this study was undertaken to assess breastfeeding practices, techniques, and related knowledge among mothers in an urban resettlement colony of India.…”

“…12,13 However, such information is still not available for urban resettlement and slum areas, which would be beneficial for designing “need-felt” intervention programs to bring about positive behavioral changes among mothers for infant health. 14…”

New Born Care Practices in a Resettlement Colony of Delhi

“…Similar results were reported by Kesterton et al from rural Karnataka. [18] A clean material was used to tie the cord in 301(86.1%) of the deliveries which are higher than the findings of the study done in urban slums of Indore by Agarwal et al [19,20] . Among the women who were delivered by unskilled birth attendants majority used unsterile material to tie the cord compared to those delivered by skilled personnel.…”

“…home vs. institution had been documented by Varma et al in Uttar Pradesh where a higher percentage (79%) of women who delivered in an institution fed colostrum as compared to those delivered at home (59%) and this difference was statistically significant (p< 0.01). [21] The prevalence of Exclusive breastfeeding was 14.4% subjects among the study participants which is lower than slums in Indore where Agarwal et al reported the prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding as 44.6% [20] . Early initiation of breastfeeding was more in those newborns who were delivered by skilled personnel compared to those delivered by unskilled care providers.…”

Age composition change and inter-provincial labor productivity: a study from the perspective of population dividend and population urbanization

“…On this basis, Vogel (2017) explored the impact of aging on LP, economic aggregates and social welfare with the further population statistics of the three oldest countries in Europe (France, Germany and Italy) and the rest of EU zone. It was found that there was a spatial aggregating feature in different areas (Agarwal, Sethi, Srivastava, Jha, & Baqui, 2009;Jianmin, 2015). Relying on data from various regions of Italy from 2000 to 2013, Mussini (2018) analyzed the regional labor productivity (RLP) and concluded that the level of LP was the main cause of unbalanced regional development (Meng, 2013).…”