CHAPTER ONEINTRODUCTIONBackground to the StudyA woman’s health care seeking behaviour during pregnancy depends a great deal on herbeliefs, culture, experience, educational level, financial status, attitude towards pregnancy,as well as herautonomy and decision making power. Adele (2010)suggests issues ofimportance to include information about pregnancy the woman’s family communicated toher as a child and whether the pregnancy was planned or unplanned. Garba, Hellandendu,andAjayi (2011) further explained that long before the advent of modern scientificmedicine, most cultures have among their patterns of life, a body of beliefs and practicesthat centre on the recognition and treatment of complications of pregnancy and conduct ofdeliveries. Thus, an understanding of appropriate health care seeking behaviour is veryimportant in achieving the desired pregnancy outcome. Negativebehaviour is highlyimplicated 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 pregnantwomen 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 healthservices, availability of alternative health care providers, and the people’s perceptionregarding the efficacy and quality of the services”.Adele (2010) explains health seeking behaviour to be those activities undertaken byindividuals in response to any discomfort felt. He further stated that in the developedcountries like United States of America (USA), most women visit ANC early inpregnancy, comply with prenatal directives and are attended to by skilled health careproviders when in labour. He also suggests that in the developing countries, especially inthe rural sub-Saharan Africa, most women consider pregnancy a natural process and theservices of skilled health care providers deemed not necessary. Rastogi (2012) observedlow utilization of ANC among rural women in India due to lack of means oftransportation, also because the women were often shy when discussing their healthproblems before a male professional. Rastogi suggests that women who had formaleducation up to secondary school level sought health care from skilled providers.

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