الفهرس 
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Abstract
Postpartum care is the care provided to the mother by a skilled health professional from the time of placental expulsion up to six weeks after delivery. It is one of the recommended strategies to reduce maternal morbidity and mortality during the postpartum period. Despite its importance, it is the most neglected aspect of women’s health care especially in developing countries. Research into the current coverage and content of postpartum care has been limited. Also the number of visits or contacts that women have with their healthcare providers during this period is not well documented.
The specific objectives of the current study were to: (a) reveal the pattern and coverage with postpartum care services among the interviewed women, (b) identify the socio-demographic, cultural, medical, obstetric and the health system factors responsible for getting benefit from the available postpartum care services among the women involved and
(c) investigate the perceived barriers to be covered by these services from postpartum women perspectives.
For fulfillment of these objectives, a cross sectional study was conducted. The study was carried out in sixteen randomly selected family health facilities in Alexandria (two facilities per each district). A sample of 300 women attending with their infants for having the first dose of pentavalent vaccine (Diphtheria, Pertussis, Tetanus, Hepatitis B and Haemophilus influenzae type b) according to the Expanded Program on Immunization schedule in Egypt was selected.
A semi-structured pre-coded interviewing format was used to collect the data.
Data was entered and analyzed using SPSS version 22.0. The chosen level of significance was < 0.05.
The results of this study are presented in four sections namely:
Section I: Background characteristics of studied women
Socio-demographic characteristics
The age of interviewed women (n=300) ranged from 19 to 40 years with a mean age of 27.6 ± 3.8 years. All of them were currently married. Most of interviewed women (72.0%) had secondary education or higher. While the rest had basic education (23.6%) or were either illiterate or just able to read and write (4.4%). On the other hand, 77.0% of the husbands had secondary education or higher. One fifth (20.0%) their husbands obtained a basic education certificate. And only 3.0% were either illiterate or just able to read and write.