City Desk :
Social network created by health workers among the urban slum dwellers is becoming a powerful tool in improving reproductive health of mothers as well as in taking proper care of new born babies.
Women in urban slums who viewed that community health workers as part of their social support network are more likely to adopt healthy maternal and child healthcare practices, a recent research conducted by icddr,b said.
Women who saw their community health workers as important members of their social network were more likely to deliver their baby with a trained birth attendant compared to women who didn’t have access to such health workers advices.
Besides, the study also showed that the slum women those are in touch with the health workers are more likely to give their baby nutrient-rich colostrums and to use postnatal care, reports BSS.
Icddr,b’s Centre for Equity and Health Systems senior social scientist Dr Alayne Adams said women are more likely to adopt positive maternal and child health practices when healthcare delivery utilises the power of social networks.
Experts said pregnant women among the slum dwellers, who migrated to urban areas as an escape from rural poverty, could bring vulnerability, isolation and a loss of the social support often present in rural family households. To address the issue, along with the government’s efforts, one of the programme run by the non-government organizations BRAC named “Manoshi” played an important role to deliver urban community-based healthcare to mothers and their children through trained health workers in Dhaka.
Icddr,b’s Dr Adams, Herfina Nababan and S. M. Manzoor Ahmed Hanifi interviewed 993 women in five urban slums in Dhaka City who had given birth within the last three months, asking them about their social ties.
They found the influence of community health workers to be striking as women who viewed Manoshi health workers as important members of the social network were twice as likely to deliver with a trained birth attendant. Besides, they also found slum women, those are in touch with the health workers, five times more likely to use postnatal healthcare services and three times more likely to give nutrient-rich colostrums to their newborns. In contrast, women relying mostly on the support of their mothers or mothers-in-law or other relatives and neighbors were less likely to access postnatal care or give colostrum to their newborn.
