Abstract

Background: The Indian society is still tradition bound to a large extent, majority traditional and cultural practices being follow during neonatal age, the period, contributing to the maximum risk of mortality and morbidity. The influence is relatively more in remote rural areas, difficult terrains of tribal regions and poverty ridden urban slums particularly, under the influence of elderly ladies of the family and neighbourhood. In India, mothers are not equipped with sufficient knowledge about child care and using traditional child care methods which might cause harm to their children’s health and even cause handicaps in their children. Paucity of literature on Traditional / Cultural Beliefs and Practices prompted to go for the present study for probing into the issues and establishing any factual relationship, if at all exists.

Materials and Methods: It is a tertiary care Hospital based descriptive (KAP) study where all the newborn babies admitted to the department of Pediatrics at SVP PGIP & SCBMCH, CUTTACK, or those came to OPD at SVPPGIP, CTC, were considered for the study during a period of 2 years from 1st August 2014 to 31st July 2016. Critically ill neonates were excluded from the study. A structured dichotomous questionnaire was prepared, validated and followed for data collection, analysis and compilation.

Results: Out of 170 mothers, majority (64.1%) were in the age group of   25 years or below, 61.8% belonged to Joint family or extended family, 91.2% of mothers belonged to Hindu religion, most (>80%) were under-Matric, more than 40% (40.6%) mothers had family income less than Rs. 9794. Old cloth was used for wrapping of majority of babies (69.4%) after birth,11 babies were wrapped after 30 minutes of delivery. 95.9% mothers massaged the baby with oil before bath and  92.4% mothers bathed baby after 1 week of life. 54% mothers initiated breast feeding within 1 hour  while,  24.7% initiated within 1 to 4 hours and 15.9% mothers started after 24 hours. 91.8% mothers gave colostrums to their babies. 75.9% mothers buried the cord once it was fallen while 12.4% mothers threw the cord into pond after falling. Applying Kajal on face and forehead practiced in 98.2% of babies.

Conclusion: Some of the practices performed by the mothers are very good and must be encouraged, some are very much harmful and need to be discouraged while some are harmless having no negative effect on the babies which should be simply ignored. Cultural practices and beliefs should be taken into account and consideration while planning for different National Health Programmes exclusively targeted at and promoted towards the improvement of the health status of Mothers and Babies.

Keywords: Traditional Cultural Practices, Neonatal Care.