AUTHOR=Sahoo Krushna Chandra , Doley Chinki , Negi Sapna , Das Sasmita , Verma Priyanka , Kanungo Srikanta , Pati Sanghamitra 

TITLE=Experiences of Urban Slum-Dwelling Women With Maternal and Child Health Services During COVID-19 Pandemic: A Multi-City Qualitative Study From India

JOURNAL=International Journal of Public Health

VOLUME=Volume 67 - 2022

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.ssph-journal.org/journals/international-journal-of-public-health/articles/10.3389/ijph.2022.1604348

DOI=10.3389/ijph.2022.1604348

ISSN=1661-8564

ABSTRACT=Objectives: The COVID-19 pandemic containment necessitated diversion of substantial health care resources thus affecting the routine essential care, posing barriers to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We explored the experiences of vulnerable communities – urban-slum dwelling women regarding maternal and child health services during COVID-19.
Methods: We conducted 48 in-depth-interviews in four Indian states – 12 in each state among urban-slum antenatal, intra-natal, and postnatal women. We used framework-analysis.
Results: Amidst the implementation of the mandatory stay-at-home, many women acknowledged that routine immunisation services and antenatal check-up remained uninterrupted, being mostly provided at the community level. To prevent transmission, the family members and relatives had restricted visit in the health facility during labour or post-delivery. Women preferred to have a shorter hospital stay post-delivery and reduced routine postnatal check-ups for fear of infection. 
Conclusion: India has a variety of national and state-level programmes focused on improving MCH indicators in order to achieve the SDGs.  COVID-19 inadvertently interrupted some components of health services, insinuating the need for disaster or pandemic-resilient MCH services delivery system.