Maternal and child health services and adoption of family planning methods

Consistency in the estimates of various socioeconomic and demographic parameters across states provided by the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) has been examined. The estimates are found to be consistent, indicating that NFHS has achieved the primary objective of providing reliable socioeconomic and demographic data for interstate comparisons. When investigating into the factors influencing various measures of utilisation of maternal and child health (MCH) services and adoption of family planning methods, it is observed that MCH services are probably reaching often to mothers who are potential cases for sterilisation. The reason seems to be that there is a lot more emphasis on achieving family planning targets, and MCH services have become a means to achieve these targets as these services form a part of the overall family planning programme. Thus, all women with or without children, who are in need of MCH-services, are not being benefited. Therefore, it has been proposed that maternal and child health services should be given more emphasis in the overall package of health services.