Parents should ensure health facilities for girls
Friday, 3 August 2007
Researchers at a seminar said Thursday parents should ensure better health facilities for adolescent girls as it is an important period of their life, reports BSS.
Guidelines from health providers and international agencies should provide more specific recommendation about food intake, appropriate weight gain, and workload and rest during pregnancy because maternal health is the major determinant of normal birth weight baby, they added.
International Centre for Diarrhoeal Diseases Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B) organised the seminar on `Gender, household and social dynamics and its linkages to maternal health and low birth weight in Bangladesh and India' in Sasakawa Auditorium of the ICDDR'B.
Foreign researchers Kavita Sethuraman of International Centre for research on Women (ICRW), Alka Barua of Foundation for Researchers in Health Systems, Saranga Jain of the ICRW and Manisha Khale of the Institute of Health Management, Pachod, and Tuchira T Naved of the ICDDR’B presented research papers at the seminar.
T Naved said adolescent girls in rural Bangladesh take healthcare from traditional providers more than trained health providers.
"There is a range of variations in treatment-seeking among unmarried adolescent girls in rural areas of the country," she added.
Alka Barua said many unmarried adolescent girls in the Indian state of Rajasthan receive care and support from their parents.
Saranga Jain and Manisha Khale in their paper said that in Bangladesh and in the Indian states of Rajasthan and Maharastra there is an apparent trade-off between marriage and education, and parents are more likely to support further schooling if girls communicate and negotiate their desire for further education.
Kavita Sethuraman said ability to communicate and negotiate a delay in pregnancy varies in important ways among newly married women in Bangladesh and in the Indian states of Maharastra and Rajasthan.
She said women in Maharastra having the least freedom to negotiate about the issue, while women in Bangladesh having the most.
Guidelines from health providers and international agencies should provide more specific recommendation about food intake, appropriate weight gain, and workload and rest during pregnancy because maternal health is the major determinant of normal birth weight baby, they added.
International Centre for Diarrhoeal Diseases Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B) organised the seminar on `Gender, household and social dynamics and its linkages to maternal health and low birth weight in Bangladesh and India' in Sasakawa Auditorium of the ICDDR'B.
Foreign researchers Kavita Sethuraman of International Centre for research on Women (ICRW), Alka Barua of Foundation for Researchers in Health Systems, Saranga Jain of the ICRW and Manisha Khale of the Institute of Health Management, Pachod, and Tuchira T Naved of the ICDDR’B presented research papers at the seminar.
T Naved said adolescent girls in rural Bangladesh take healthcare from traditional providers more than trained health providers.
"There is a range of variations in treatment-seeking among unmarried adolescent girls in rural areas of the country," she added.
Alka Barua said many unmarried adolescent girls in the Indian state of Rajasthan receive care and support from their parents.
Saranga Jain and Manisha Khale in their paper said that in Bangladesh and in the Indian states of Rajasthan and Maharastra there is an apparent trade-off between marriage and education, and parents are more likely to support further schooling if girls communicate and negotiate their desire for further education.
Kavita Sethuraman said ability to communicate and negotiate a delay in pregnancy varies in important ways among newly married women in Bangladesh and in the Indian states of Maharastra and Rajasthan.
She said women in Maharastra having the least freedom to negotiate about the issue, while women in Bangladesh having the most.