Exclusive Breast Feeding of Infants of Recently Delivered Women of Uttar Pradesh, India

Abstract

When ASHAs were introduced in NRHM in 2005, their primary aim was to visit homes of newborns as the first program in Uttar Pradesh (UP) operated through the ASHAs was the Comprehensive Child Survival Program in 2008. Since then, tracking of all deliveries and all the newborns are an integral part of the work of ASHAs in all the primary health care programs operated by the NHM in UP (GoI,2005, GoUP, 2013). The current article examines the role & work of ASHAs through the responses of the mothers of newborns & infants at district level. Evaluation studies on the performance of ASHAs was done since 2011 as by then ASHAs had actually worked in the field for a minimum period of 5 years. It is to be noted that National Rural Health Mission was rolled out in April 2005 but it took about one to two years for the states to hire ASHAs and put things in place right from the state to the village level (GOUP, 2013). In this article, a comprehensive feedback is elicited from the Recently Delivered Women on the Exclusive Breast Feeding (EBF) practices of their infants as part of newborn & infant care program at the district level. The current study explores some of the crucial variables on the home-based newborn care activities like the ideal practice of EBF of the newborn & infants through the response of mothers of newborns & infants on newborn care. The ideal practice of EBF in newborn & infants in child health programs is a critical facilitator in breastfeeding practices. The current article follows up the role of ASHAs in Home Based Newborn Care & child care program through the response of the mothers on EBF & the type of fluids they gave to their children on the day prior to the survey. The mothers were selected as respondents as they were the selected mothers from the list of mothers available with their ASHAs at the time of survey.