Maternal health care in Vietnam: demand for antenatal care and choice of delivery care services

Abstract

This thesis research aims to analyze the impact of individual characteristics, household characteristic and communities in utilization of maternal health care services in Vietnam. Using the latest data of Vietnam’s Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 2013-2014, it employs the Negative Nominal Model for demand of prenatal care visits and Multinomial Logistic Model for the choice of delivery facility. With respect to the demand of prenatal care visits, the result shows that higher education, higher age, exposure to mass media and no religion increase the number of prenatal care visits while higher birth order, unmarried or separated status, ethnicity group and lower household wealth index decrease the number of prenatal care. Moreover, living in rural, disadvantaged areas and the community with higher illiteracy rate decrease the demand of prenatal care visits while living in the community with higher proportion of women giving birth at health facilities increase the demand. Concerning the choice of delivery facility, more prenatal care visits and exposure to mass media are positively associated with the choice of giving birth at public hospital. In contrast, suffering the burden of taking care more children, lower household wealth index, living in rural and the community with higher illiteracy ratio adversely affect the choice of public hospital delivery. The results suggest the improvement of maternal health program in rural and underdeveloped areas as well as universal education over the country, especially for the ethnic minority group.