Many women, as well as married adolescent women, in Bangladesh experience life threatening complications during pregnancy and childbirth and also after childbirth. But health services utilization is far under any acceptable standard. The situation of pregnancy and childbirth related morbidity and mortality is worse in Bangladesh because of low utilization of maternal health services. Using data from Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey–2004, an attempt has been made to investigate maternal health services utilization by ever married adolescent women in Bangladesh. This study, based on the Andersen's health seeking behavior model, considers individual's characteristics which influence health service utilization.
In order to estimate the effects of individual's characteristics on maternal health services utilization, four dependent variables were considered: antenatal care, place of delivery, assistance during delivery and postnatal care; and logistic regression models were estimated for those four dependent variables.
Results reveal that education level is the most significant determinant for increasing utilization of antenatal care, of place of delivery at health facilities, and of assistance at delivery. Type of family has significant impact on place of delivery, and on assistance at delivery. Household wealth index and place of residence are also the significant determinants for antenatal care. Only age at childbirth has statistically significant impact on postnatal care. For raising maternal health services utilization, some long term interventions such as providing education to girls should be emphasized. Short term intervention as community education for adult members of extended families and for ever married adolescent women should be implemented.