Utilization Conditions of The Maternal Child Health Services Offered by Public Health Centers by Mothers Aged 15-49 Living in The Povincial Center of Erzurum and The Affecting Factors on The Utilization

Abstract

Mothers with the age range of 15-49 years and recorded at 9 public health service stations
in the provincial center of Erzurum were included in this research. Each of these health centers was
considered to be a single set and sampling was applied in every set by simple random sampling
method. The research was conducted on a total of 758 mothers. The data were collected by
questionnaires; percentage, and ki-square tests were used for evaluations.
It was found at the end of the research that a great majority of mothers utilized the health centers
but the rate of utilization of these health center was low regarding the utilization for maternal and
child health services. The mothers included in the study, 64.9% utilized prenatal care but that the
rate of the mothers receiving postnatal service was rather low (26.9%). It was determined that of
the mothers utilizing contraseptive method, 63.2% applied active contraseptive method. It was also
found that among the services offered by nurses and midwives during their home-visits, recording
was at the first order with a rate of 89.3% and the folow-up services for pregnants (61.2 %),
children (37.6 %), and postnatal (26.9 %) were low. Several suggestions were made regarding the
results obtained from the study.