Assessment of Maternal and Child Health Care in Selected Slum Areas of Raiganj Municipality, West Bengal, India

The nutritional insufficiency among under 5 years children is a serious challenge for India. Despite several efforts have been made to improve the maternal health and child health care, disparities across various socio-economic groups in acquiring MCH services remains major challenges in India. This paper aims to examine the maternal health care and nutritional status of children in selected slums of Raiganj Municipality. A cross-sectional study has been carried out using primary data (n=180) collected from the selected slums. The Z-score of various anthropometric measures have been carried out using WHO Anthro software (version 3.2.2) and the various maternal health indicators have presented in percentage table. About 42% women married before 18 years of age and 17% were illiterate. Nearly 45% women took less than 4 times of antenatal care and only 54% were taken full course of IFA. Furthermore 8.9%, 20% and 16.1% children were severely underweight, stunted, wasted respectively. The findings of the study suggest that providing more attention to the pregnant women and children of under 5 years of slums of Raiganj to improve the nutritional status of the children.