Impact of migration in women’s health and knowledge of AIDS: a case study of India

Praween Kumar Agrawal, Johns Hopkins University and Collaborative Centre, Lucknow, India

In the contemporary developing world population mobility in the form of rural to urban migration, has been increasing rapidly since the 1960s. Migration in India has traditionally been dominated by short-term rural to rural movements, which accounts for more than sixty percent of all migration, and are comprised mainly of women moving between their natal homes upon marriage. The present paper explores the effect of patterns and duration of migration upon health and morbidity condition of women and knowledge and awareness of AIDS by analysing the data from India’s second National Family Health Survey (NFHS-2), 1998-99. In India, still rural to rural migration of women is predominant. However, trend is decreasing for rural to rural migration and increasing more for all the three other streams of migration. In respect to health outcome, women migrating towards rural area were more underweight than migrating towards urban area whereas reverse for obesity. However, women migrating from rural to rural area were more anaemic than women migrating from rural to urban area. Significant differences were also found for morbidity conditions like asthma, tuberculosis, jaundice, malaria and some reproductive health problems according to streams of migration. Stream of migration and duration of migration plays a key role in health, morbidity condition and knowledge of AIDS among women. Thus study comes out with the policy outcome that quality of health care in urban areas should be more widely disseminated in rural areas to improve the health status of women. Also the IEC programmes related to AIDS should be made more strengthened and effective through television and radio.