IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v51y2000i10p1447-1456.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Infant death rates and animal-shed delivery in remote rural areas of Nepal

Author

Listed:
  • Thapa, Narbada
  • Chongsuvivatwong, Virasakdi
  • Geater, Alan F.
  • Ulstein, Magnar
  • Bechtel, Gregory A.

Abstract

This article outlines a community-based retrospective study in a remote area of Nepal and describes local birth practices and their impact on infant mortality. Data collection was carried out in two steps, a household survey from September to October 1996 and a qualitative research phase. Data collected include socio-economic background, reproductive history, birth practices and child survival. Among 3007 live-born children, 660 (22%) died before their first birthday. In keeping with local customs, approximately half of the children were delivered in an animal shed and the other half in the home. Children born in an animal shed were at significantly higher risk of dying than were those born in the home even after adjusting for socio-economic status and biological variables. The association was stronger in the neonatal period (OR=2.8, 95% CI 1.9-4.1) than during the post-neonatal period (OR=1.3, 95% CI 1.02-1.6). The preparation of the delivery place was inadequate and thereby facilitated infection of both the newborn and the mother. Traditional norms and animal-shed delivery practices are common in the Jumla community. The reasons addressed for giving birth in the animal shed included (1) Household Deity's anger if delivery takes place in the home and (2) easy to clean the shed following the birth.

Suggested Citation

  • Thapa, Narbada & Chongsuvivatwong, Virasakdi & Geater, Alan F. & Ulstein, Magnar & Bechtel, Gregory A., 2000. "Infant death rates and animal-shed delivery in remote rural areas of Nepal," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 51(10), pages 1447-1456, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:51:y:2000:i:10:p:1447-1456
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(00)00045-9
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Brunson, Jan, 2010. "Confronting maternal mortality, controlling birth in Nepal: The gendered politics of receiving biomedical care at birth," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 71(10), pages 1719-1727, November.
    2. Boris A. Portnov & Madhav Adhikari & Moshe Schwartz, 2007. "Urban Growth in Nepal: Does Location Matter?," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 44(5-6), pages 915-937, May.
    3. Bird, Kate & Shepherd, Andrew, 2003. "Livelihoods and Chronic Poverty in Semi-Arid Zimbabwe," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 591-610, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:51:y:2000:i:10:p:1447-1456. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.