Objective   To survey the health care situation of pregnant and lying-in women in Hubei provience and to explore the influence factors on the health care situation of pregnant and lying-in women.

  Methods   By multi-stage stratifiedsystematic random sampling procedure, 687 married women aged 17 to 45 years from 8 rural counties and 3 urban cities of Hubei provience, who at leasthad deliveried one child from J an.1st 1998 to Oct.20th 2003, were investigated.Chi-square Test, Kruskal-Wallis H test and non-conditional logistic regression were used for analysis.

  Results   The prenatal examination rate were 99.4% and 84.7%, the instiutional delivery were 95.6% and 54.8%, the cesarean section rate were 46.1% and 10.7%, the percenage of the postapartum visiting by the health personnel were 67.3% and 53.3%, respectively in urban and rural.All the differnences had the statistics significance(P < 0.01).The multivariate analysis showed that the health care of pregnant and lying-in women was associated with their economic income and ages in urban, and it was related to the numbers of live neonatus, their economic income education, occupation and the behavior of seeking health-related information in rural.

  Conclusion   The health care conditions of preganant and lying-in women in urban are different from those in rural, the first time of prenatal examination is delayed, the rate of visitation after birth is significant lower than that of the rate of examination before birth, certain disparity existed with the national class-A city and rural health service standards.