Utilization of antenatal care services in Tanta

ABSTRACT

Proper antenatal care should start as early as the mother conceives and continues throughout pregnancy. Therefore, more effort should be made to make antenatal care used more efficiently. This study aims to find out the pattern of use of antenatal services in Tanta. A simple random sample of 103 pregnant mothers attending the maternal child health centers in Tanta in their last trimester of pregnancy were chosen. An interview schedule was used for data collection. The results show that more than half of the mothers did not know the time of the initial antenatal visit and were unaware of the importance of health supervision during pregnancy. The staff of the clinic played the least role in giving information about antenatal visits and the nurses are unaware about their educational role in the maternity clinic