Availability and Utilization of Anganwadi Services in an Adopted Urban Area of Wardha

Abstract

Background - The ICDS is world’s largest community-based child nutrition and development programme aimed at holistic development of children (0-6 years), expectant and nursing mothers through the Anganwadi centers (AWC). Improvement in nutritional and health status of their beneficiaries to prevent morbidities and mortalities due to malnutrition is one of the important objectives of ICDS. Objectives: To determine the availability and extent of utilization of AWC services by the beneficiaries, and to study factors influencing utilization and reasons for non/under utilization. Methodology: A community based cross-sectional study conducted in three well defined adopted urban field practice areas of a rural tertiary health care facility in Wardha, Maharashtra. A cluster comprising of 40 households was identified in each area to provide 140 study participants. Epi-info-3.7.1 for univariate and SYSTAT-12 used for multivariate analysis. Results: Overall 89.29% of beneficiaries utilized one or more services of AWC. Working women and those with lower socio-economic status had significantly and independently lower/non utilization of AWC services. Conclusions: Most of the study participants were aware and utilized the services of AWC. Among the women not utilizing the services; the reasons for non-utilization need to be addressed for optimal utilization of AWCs.

Keywords

• Anganwadi
• ICDS
• Utilization