title: Awareness and perception of mothers about functioning and different services of ICDS in two districts of West Bengal.
abstract: Integrated Child Development Services, a national programme of the Government of India has health, nutrition, and pre-school education components of services. To ascertain awareness, perception of mothers about functioning and different services of ICDS a cross-sectional community based study was conducted between June to September 2007 in Howrah and Purulia districts of West Bengal. A total of 1235 mothers were included as study subjects. As per opinion of the mothers 73% AWCs opened regularly, behaviour of the AWWs was friendly (71.6%) and 63% mothers opined that ICDS is beneficial to their children. 84.2% mothers were aware of any ICDS services. Quantity and quality of supplementary food was acceptable to 88% and 72.7% mothers respectively. 79.2% and 87.5% mothers did not receive any advice on child feeding and growth chart. Making beneficiaries aware about services by targeted interventions will ensure better utilization of ICDS.
authors.affiliation: R. G. Kar Medical College, Kolkata, India.
authors.forename: Akhil Bandhu
authors.initials: AB
authors.lastname: Biswas
authors.forename: Dilip Kumar
authors.initials: DK
authors.lastname: Das
authors.forename: Rabindra Nath
authors.initials: RN
authors.lastname: Roy
authors.forename: Indranil
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Saha
authors.forename: Prabha
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Shrivastava
authors.forename: Kaninika
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Mitra
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D002662:Child Health Services / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D005522:Food Services / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006293:Health Promotion; D006801:Humans; D007194:India; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D008507:Medically Underserved Area; D009035:Mothers; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D011247:Pregnancy; D011632:Public Assistance / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D055815:Young Adult