CHAPTER ONEINTRODUCTIONBackground to the StudyA woman’s health care seeking behaviour during pregnancy depends a great deal on her beliefs, culture, experience, educational level, financial status, attitude towards pregnancy, as well as herautonomy and decision making power. Adele (2010)suggests issues of importance to include information about pregnancy the woman’s family communicated to her as a child and whether the pregnancy was planned or unplanned. Garba, Hellandendu, and Ajayi (2011) further explained that long before the advent of modern scientific medicine, most cultures have among their patterns of life, a body of beliefs and practices that centre on the recognition and treatment of complications of pregnancy and conduct of deliveries. Thus, an understanding of appropriate health care seeking behaviour is very important in achieving the desired pregnancy outcome. Negativebehaviour is highly implicated in increased morbidity and mortality of mother and baby.Osubor, Fatusi, and Chiwuzie(2006),suggests Maternal Health Care Seeking Behaviour (MHCSB) to include the number of visits made to antenatal clinic (ANC) by pregnant women and their preference for place of delivery.Jain, Nandan and Misra (2006) definedhealth seeking behaviour as “a complex outcome of many factors operating at individual, family and community levels including their biosocial profile, past experiences with health services, availability of alternative health care providers, and the people’s perception regarding the efficacy and quality of the services”. Adele (2010) explains health seeking behaviour to be those activities undertaken by individuals in response to any discomfort felt. He further stated that in the developed countries like United States of America (USA), most women visit ANC early in pregnancy, comply with prenatal directives and are attended to by skilled health care providers when in labour. He also suggests that in the developing countries, especially in the rural sub-Saharan Africa, most women consider pregnancy a natural process and the services of skilled health care providers deemed not necessary. Rastogi (2012) observed low utilization of ANC among rural women in India due to lack of means of transportation, also because the women were often shy when discussing their health problems before a male professional. Rastogi suggests that women who had formal education up to secondary school level sought health care from skilled providers.

1. 1. This material content is developed to serve as a GUIDE for students to conduct academic research work
2. 2. As a source for additional understanding of the subject.
3. 3. As a source for ideas for your own research work (if properly referenced).
4. 4. For PROPER paraphrasing (see your university definition of plagiarism and acceptable paraphrase)
5. 5. Direct citing (if referenced properly)
Thank you so much for your respect to the authors copyright.