A Review on Interventions to Improve the Maternal Care during Pregnancy and Childbirth in Rural India

Abstract

Most of the maternal deaths occur in developing countries and India contributes to onefifth
of this maternal mortality. Many of these deaths are preventable through effective
interventions. The present study aims to address the gap in the effect of improved quality
of care in pregnancy and childbirth through a review of existing literature. Its focus on
displaying the evidence of interventions on care during pregnancy and childbirth in rural
India and to compile the existing evidence of the effectiveness of these interventions which
may be helpful for policy making. The search strategy was to identify relevant articles in
the database like MEDLINE, PubMed, Popline, and Cochrane. A total of 264 abstracts
from 2005 to 2018 were identified from the database search. After reviewing the abstracts
against inclusion and quality assessment, 16 articles were found suitable for review. The
review shows that community-level interventions focusing on women, frontline health
workers and family members through knowledge enhancement, use of mobile technology
and upgrading health facilities resulted in improvement in the utilization of maternal
practices. This review found evidence that community health workers were effective in
delivering health promotion or education or preventive intervention for maternal services
in rural India.