OBJECTIVETo understand the current status and its changing patterns of perinatal health care in some southern and northern areas of China from 1994 to 2000.

METHODSData was collected in 13 counties/cities covered by Perinatal Health Care Surveillance System which was part of the Sino-American cooperative project on neural tube defects prevention, established in 1992. The study population consisted of 368 589 women who delivered single live births of at least 20 gestational weeks from 1994 through 2000. Chi-square test was employed to test the difference on the proportions of women with prenatal checkup, women with early prenatal care onset, women with at least five prenatal visits, hospital delivery versus home delivery as well as the proportion of women with at least three postpartum visits. Two-way ANOVA was used to test the differences of mean of gestational weeks at first prenatal visit and the mean of prenatal visits between different year and areas.

RESULTSThe proportion of women with prenatal checkup remained over 99.0% from 1994 through 2000. The mean of gestational weeks at first prenatal visit changed from 13.1 weeks in 1994 to 10.7 weeks in 2000. The proportions of women with early prenatal care onset increased from 65.5% in 1994 to 79.4% in 2000 while women with at least five prenatal visit increasing from 34.1% to 71.8%, hospital delivery increasing from 91.3% to 98.8%, home delivery decreasing from 5.6 % to 0. 6%, women with at least three postpartum visits increasing from 80.5 % to 95.1%. Except for the proportion of women with early prenatal care onset, other proportions in northern areas were lower than those in southern areas in the same year. Greater differences between urban and rural areas in northern areas were found than in southern areas.

CONCLUSIONThe utilization of perinatal health care services was greatly improved in both southern and northern areas from 1994 to 2000. However, there were still obvious differences in the perinatal health care services between northern and southern areas as well as between urban and rural areas in northern China.