The maternal and child health service in Thailand was originally established in 1918, and the first official maternal and child heath handbook was published in 1985. Since then, the handbook has been a major feature of the Thai MCH service and an important instrument for improving the health of pregnant women and children in Thailand. It has been periodically reviewed, revised and updated to maintain currency and to meet the ever changing and evolving health care needs of Thai women and children. This paper outlines the origins and history of this handbook. It comments briefly on its utilization which is still less widespread than expected, especially among clients of private health services. Future challenges are to promote use of the handbook through all types of health facilities throughout Thailand, so as to increase its utilization and further improve the quality of maternal and child health services.

In Thailand, the maternal and child health (MCH) handbook has been used for nearly two decades in one of the MCH activities. A cross-sectional study was conducted to assess the utilization of the MCH handbook, and to analyze the relation to mother's MCH promoting belief and action. The data was collected from 224 mothers at one district in Kanchanburi province, Thailand, from January to February in 2005. About the utilization of the MCH handbook by mothers, there was a low rate of reading (14.3% mother had read all of the contents) and self-recording (0.9% mother had recorded every part). Multiple regression coefficients showed utilization of the MCH handbook was related to both mother's MCH promoting belief (p=0.001) and action (p=0.039). This was the strongest predictor variable of mother's MCH promoting belief. Other factors which significantly related to MCH promoting belief were family income, age, and education, and relation to action were marital status, occupation and age. According to the findings of this study, for MCH promotion, mothers' belief and action can be inspired through utilizing the MCH handbook and comprehensive assessment.